Mary Havens

“In his book "Being Mortal", the surgeon Atul Gawande accurately describes the joy that flows from being good at your work. 'You become a doctor for what you imagine to be the satisfaction of the work, and that turns out to be the satisfaction of competence,' Dr. Gawande writes. 'It is a deep satisfaction very much like the one that a carpenter experiences in restoring a fragile antique chest...It comes partly from being helpful to others. But it also comes from being technically skilled and able to solve difficult, intricate problems. Your competence gives you a secure sense of identity.”
― Mary Louise Kelly, It. Goes. So. Fast.: The Year of No Do-Overs

“A woman becomes a responsible parent when she stops being an obedient daughter”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“I stepped from the air-conditioned compartment onto the station platform, and the motherly breath of the suburbs enfolded me. It smelt of lawn sprinklers and station wagons and tennis rackets and dogs and babies.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history but honest and inclusive history. If textbook authors feel compelled to give good moral instruction, the way origin myths have always done, they could accomplish this aim by allowing students to learn both the "good" and the "bad" sides of the Pilgrim tale. Conflict would then become part of the story, and students might discover that the knowledge they gain has implication for their lives today. Correctly taught, the issues of the era of the first Thanksgiving could help Americans grow more thoughtful and more tolerant, rather than more ethnocentric.”
― James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong