Ashley

“We forget how ready people are to help. You can talk all you want about the evil spirit of man. But I don’t think it’s true. I think most of us are just dying to be good. And one way we can do that is to forgive the bad in others as well as in ourselves. I don’t say don’t hold people accountable. Help them be accountable. But to say those words to yourself or another? ‘I forgive you’? Most powerful words in the world.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Confession Club

“I think love is all about risk. And reinvention. And honesty and revelation. And if you don’t have that in a relationship, you don’t grow, and you don’t stay true to what you started together.”
― Elizabeth Berg, The Confession Club

“I looked around me at the birth and growth and death piled atop one another, at the open bellies of downed trees feeding new sprouts, all the life pushing through every crook and crevice and possibility for light. It was an ancient intelligence far too rich and complex to fully grasp but exactly what I needed to remind myself that it is in these layers of time that everything becomes itself… Strength, I had learned, was like this littered forest floor, built of small triumphs and infinite blunders, sunny hours followed by sudden storms that tore it all down. We are one and all alike if for no other reason than the excruciating and beautiful way we grow piece by unpredictable piece, falling, pushing from the debris, rising again, and hoping for the best”
― Shelley Read, Go as a River

“We must do as we're told," Ava reminded her. "We will honor your mother and follow her instructions."

"Because she is your maker?" Lea asked, her heart breaking.

Ava shook her head. "Because she is yours.”
― Alice Hoffman, The World That We Knew