Right before I gave birth, someone said to me, “the love of your life is inbound,” and they couldn’t have been more correct.
“Great meals rarely start at points that all look like beginnings. They usually pick up where something else leaves off. This is how most of the best things are made - imagine if the world had to begin from scratch each dawn: a tree would never grow, nor would we ever get to see the etchings of gentle rings on a clamshell... Meals' ingredients must be allowed to topple into one another like dominos. Broccoli stems, their florets perfectly boiled in salty water, must be simmered with olive oil and eaten with shaved Parmesan on toast; their leftover cooking liquid kept for the base for soup, studded with other vegetables, drizzled with good olive oil, with the rind of the Parmesan added for heartiness. This continuity is the heart and soul of cooking.”
― An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace
― An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace
“Choosing to love—despite all the ways that people let you down, and disappear, and break your heart. Knowing everything we know about how hard life is and choosing to love, anyway.. That’s not weakness, that’s courage.”
― Things You Save in a Fire
― Things You Save in a Fire
“Someone had told her once that mothers existed to blunt the existential loneliness of being a person. If that was true then her biggest maternal responsibility was simply companionship. You bring a child into this fractious, chaotic world out of the heat of your womb, and then spend the next ten years walking beside them while they figure out how to be a person.”
― Before the Fall
― Before the Fall
“There are things in this world that no human being should be able to endure. We should die of heartbreak, but we do not. Instead, we are forced to survive, to bear witness.”
― The Good Father
― The Good Father
“Everyone has their own path. The choices they've made. How any two people end up in the same place at the same time is a mystery. You get on an elevator with a dozen strangers. You ride a bus, wait in line for the bathroom. It happens every day. To try to predict the places we'll go and the people we'll meet would be pointless.”
― Before the Fall
― Before the Fall
Books on the Nightstand
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— last activity Feb 05, 2026 12:12PM
A group to discuss books and topics mentioned on Books on the Nightstand, a blog and podcast about books and reading.
Kendra’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Kendra’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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