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“Do not worry, Mr. Wallace. I am not being facetious with you. I do truly believe I am fortunate. I am fortunate because I have been able to spend my life in study of the world. As such, I have never felt insignificant. This life is a mystery, yes, and it is often a trial, but if one can find some facts within it, one should always do so—for knowledge is the most precious of all commodities.”

“I believe that we are all transient.” She thought for a while and added, “I believe that we are half-blind and full of errors. I believe that we understand very little, and what we do understand is mostly wrong. I believe that life cannot be survived—that is evident!—but if one is lucky, life can be endured for quite a long while. If one is both lucky and stubborn, life can sometimes even be enjoyed.”

“What a grim view! I wish you did not consider our lives so bleakly. On the whole of things, I still see more wonder in the world than suffering.” “I know you do,” said Alma, “and that is why I worry for you. You are an idealist, which means that you are destined to be disappointed, and perhaps even wounded. You seek a gospel of benevolence and miracle, which leaves no room for the sorrows of existence.

“But why should our Lord not be a botanist?” Ambrose asked. “What occupation would you prefer your deity to have?” Alma considered the question seriously. “Perhaps a mathematician,” she decided. “Scratching and erasing at things, you know. Adding and subtracting. Multiplying and dividing. Toying with theories and new calculations. Discarding earlier mistakes. It appears a more sensible idea to me.”

His only request had been this: once the coffin was in the hole, he’d asked that they cover the lid with straw. He wanted to make sure that, when the first shovelfuls of dirt hit his wife’s casket, the awful sound would be muffled.

When the first wave arrived, barely touching her toes, it was so light and translucent a ripple that you might be forgiven for thinking it insignificant, that it would vanish soon, leaving no trace. But then followed another wave, and the next one, rising as far as her ankles, and the one after that covering her knees, and before you knew it she was immersed in liquid pain, up to her neck, drowning.

What I am trying to say is, you are young and the young are impatient. They can’t wait for school to be over and life to begin. But let me tell you a secret: it already has! This is what life is. Boredom, frustration, trying to get out of things, longing for something better.

A map is a two-dimensional representation with arbitrary symbols and incised lines that decide who is to be our enemy and who is to be our friend, who deserves our love and who deserves our hatred and who, our sheer indifference. Cartography is another name for stories told by winners. For stories told by those who have lost, there isn’t one.

“You’re saying you don’t believe in a God who would hate, right? And if that God does exist, you’ll remain defiant.” “Yes, that’s…yes.” “Yeah, that’s incredibly daring! And it’s beautiful.”

Being soft and flexible was always more durable than being hard and brittle. Admitting you were afraid always took more guts than pretending you weren’t. Being willing to make a mistake got you further than never trying. The world had decided that to be fallible was weak. But we are all fallible. The strong ones are the ones who accept it.

And it did not excuse his attitude. But she understood, finally. Jimmy had been told from a young age that fear and failing and trying and wanting and openness and kindness and sincerity made him weak. And because he had believed it, he’d learned to suppress all of those things. And when he saw those traits in others, he hated them because he hated himself.

“Well, we are the stars,” Joan said. “And the stars are us. Every atom in our bodies was once out there. Was once a part of them. To look at the night sky is to look at parts of who you once were, who you may one day be.” As she said it, Joan could tell how lonely it must sound. To find companionship with the stars. But what she meant was bigger than that.

Bravery is being unafraid of something other people are afraid of. Courage is being afraid, but strong enough to do it anyway.

Then one day, this boy joins our class and he’s really good at math. Not as good as me, but almost. And he asks me for help. And I told him I’d think about it. But…I didn’t want to. I was so scared that he’d take the top score from me. I told my mom I wasn’t going to help him, and my mom said if I was going to be proud of myself for being generous, I had to do it even when it meant I might lose something.

The appeal for someone like me (us) to find, on the face of this mad, inside-out, senseless, barbaric, intolerably fraught and painful and mind-spinning planet, some semblance of order…well, of course it’s appealing.

This is how I lived back then—through books. I locked myself into their stories, dreamt of their characters at night, pretended to be them. They were my armor against the hard edges of reality. I carried them with me wherever I went, like a talisman in my pocket, thinking of them as almost more real than the people around me, who spoke and lived in denial, destined, I thought, to never do anything worth recounting.

You will have hope, and you have been forgiven. Forgiveness, which takes you back to the person you were and lets you reset them. Hope, which exists in a future in which you are new. Forgiveness and hope are miracles. They let you change your life. They are time-travel.

I know how much you’ve longed for your future to lean down and cup your face, to whisper “Don’t worry, it gets better.” The truth is, it won’t get better if you keep making the same mistakes. It can get better, but you must allow yourself to imagine a world in which you are better.

This is the reaction I always expected from Mother, although it feels more extreme now that it is actually happening. Perhaps if I had been better prepared for this, it wouldn’t upset me as much. Perhaps if I had a little more self-worth, I would understand that Mother’s love is too conditional to want.

Normalcy, it seems, is something I cannot afford. I dare not risk bursting the little bubble that we exist in. If we fight, this might all end. She gets as close as she can to me, and I let her, I even put my arm around her because I can’t help myself. ‘You’re the only calm thing in my life.’ She says into my neck. Oh. There isn’t a note in her voice. She isn’t trying to lure me in or sweeten me, not now.

It’s hard to hold on to people the older we get. Life looks different for everyone, and you have to keep choosing one another. You have to make a conscious effort to say, over and over again, “You.” Not everyone makes that choice. Not everyone can.

Listen to me, Bean. If I could, I would take every hour that I sat in that fucking cubicle, under those sick yellow lights, staring at an Excel spreadsheet, and I would burn them up—all those hours—until they were just a glowing ember in the air, and then I would take your hand and we would watch the entirety of all those days, all that time, slither and writhe around us. An orange symphony of waste.

there’s nothing a woman hates more than walking by herself, and hearing a strange noise, or feeling the presence of an “other,” that horrible sickness all over my body, ground shifting, women are so unsafe, all of us always pretending to be safe, always avoiding any reminder that our safety is upheld only as long as the person closest to us keeps deciding not to kill us.

Appreciate what your stuff says about how far you have come

Fantastic! Fried Green Tomatoes meets Fever Beach and have a teenager. Loved every minute! Highly recommend.

Perhaps because we’re so terrestrialy biased, air-breathing creatures that we are, it has taken us until now to realize that everything we care about is anchored in the ocean.

I want whoever reads this to understand what they’re getting, which is mainly confusion, because I don’t know how to be clear about any of this.

I can’t explain it, except to say that inaction felt obvious, a decision already made by someone else. The basic truth of the situation occurred to me only as if shouted and barely heard. I felt afraid, of course—but, beneath this, still in some sense quietly removed. I suppose a body has to find a way to cope with panic. I don’t know how this works. Panic, as I’ve said, is a waste of oxygen.

I see my mother in myself, though less in the sense of inherited features and more in the sense of an intruder poorly hidden behind a curtain.