Ellie

“How long does it take to know anyone? Five minutes, and done. Nothing can move you off a first impression. That person in your life's passenger seat? Always a hitchhiker, to be dropped off just down the road.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“That is the fastest way to ruin a woman's reputation, after all - to imply that she has not adequately threaded the needle that is being sexually satisfying without ever appearing to desire sexual satisfaction.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Wintering is a season in the cold. It is a fallow period in life when you’re cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider. Perhaps it results from an illness or a life event such as a bereavement or the birth of a child; perhaps it comes from a humiliation or failure. Perhaps you’re in a period of transition and have temporarily fallen between two worlds. Some winterings creep upon us more slowly, accompanying the protracted death of a relationship, the gradual ratcheting up of caring responsibilities as our parents age, the drip-drip-drip of lost confidence. Some are appallingly sudden, like discovering one day that your skills are considered obsolete, the company you worked for has gone bankrupt, or your partner is in love with someone new. However it arrives, wintering is usually involuntary, lonely, and deeply painful.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“Nobody had ever said to me before, "You need to live a life that you can cope with, not the one that other people want. Start saying no. Just do one thing a day. No more than two social events in a week." I owe my life to him.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times