Adele > Recent Status Updates

Audiobook

Audiobook. 4h 50min left and I have zero desire to keep listening. This story just doesn't compel me at all.

Audiobook.

"The ubiquity of received attitudes about what men & women did and did not want seemed to relieve everyone of the responsibility to actually examine their desires, leading to some pretty bizarre behavior."

"I'd never been alone in my life. As in, truly alone, made to rely solely on myself for a substantial stretch of time. Obviously I was independent; independence was my generation's birthright. ... It wasn't merely that my identity was constructed entirely out of my relationships with other people-my relationships *were* my identity. My relationships took the place of myself."

You tell me; I tell you. Anything. All of it! Every close relationship since, friendships included, has coursed along this river of conversation. For me closeness was talking.

So many words get lost. They leave the mouth & lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves.

I can't put this book down... "So yes. It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing *because*. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something *despite*. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect."

"We know exactly how to hustle for approval & acceptance. We know what to wear, what to talk about, how to make people happy, what not to mention-we know how to chameleon our way through the day. Fitting in is about assessing a situation & becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn't require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are."

"A wing but talking about Jesus does far more damage than fifty atheists." Wow. What a statement.

It is a word. Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man's will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself.

There are names for people who take advantage of women who are not in full control of themselves, and none of those names will ever rightfully be applied to me.

Do not misunderstand. She was not loud, or vain. We stare at a fire because it flickers, because it glows. The light is what catches our eyes, but what makes a man lean close to a fire is the warmth you feel when you come near.

The day we fret about the future is the day we leave childhood behind.

Sgroib - Gaelic - refers to the peculiar itchiness that settles on the upper lip before taking a sip of whiskey.

"The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep."

"Don't try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you are good, bad things can still happen. And if you are bad, you can still be lucky."

"Desperate to save myself in a river of people saving themselves. And if they chanced to look down and see me struggling underneath them, they saw that even the crooked girl believed her own life was precious. This is what it means to be a beast in the kingdom."

"I could see that the whole idea and business of Childhood was nothing guaranteed. it seemed to me, in fact, like something more or less invented by white people and stuck onto the front of grown-up life like a frill on a dress."

"It had already happened so many times in my life (my wedding day comes to mind) that I thought I was out of the woods, not realizing I'd merely paused on the edge of another narrow precipice in the midst of a long, long fall."

"I know people. Most have no earthly notion of the price of a snow-white conscience." Think I'm going to enjoy this book.

"I love the word 'accumulative' ...emotional problems are so often the end result of many things going on. It wasn't just the drugs, the alcohol, the pills, the fame or the childhood. It was accumulative, and the list was growing ...and growing ...and growing..."

"inside her chest pulses something huge, something full of longing, something unafraid."