Rachel > Recent Status Updates

“The team members reported perceiving The introverted leaders as more open and receptive to their ideas, which motivated them to work harder and fold more shirts. Extroverts, on the other hand, can be so intent on putting their own stamp on events that they risk losing others’ good ideas along the way and allowing workers to lapse into passivity.”

“I suppose we might be old fashioned, but I don’t think love is. Who doesn’t need it? We all of us need it, especially those who say they don’t” (p. 100).

“He cares about words. He taught her one of her favorite words: hiraeth, a Welsh word that means homesickness for a home you annoy return to, or that maybe never was; it means nostalgia and yearning and grief for lost places” (p. 14).

“If you want to know what depression is like, all you have to do is look into a depressed person’s eyes.”

“Stiff upper lips and getting on with things were all very well, but sometimes there was nothing to do but admit that things were quite simply awful.” P. 217

“The world has become angry and mad” p. 205

“As usual it would be a quick change before going to the office and I would sleep later. Mother always worried about how we kept going. I had no idea. We just did.” P. 164

“She also taught me that being womanly was not necessarily incompatible with being a mind.”

“Oh, no. I am a feminist, but no man hater. A misanthrope in general, I suppose like yourself, sir. However, unlike you I find women to be the marginally more rational half of the race.”

Favorite line so far: “Normal is a setting in a washing machine” haha.

It’s slow going over here.

“History is the study of power and how it has been used for destructive or beneficent ends” (p. 43).

“We can become too accustomed to life; we tend to take for granted leaves on the trees, the color of the sky, the face of someone we love, worst of all, ourselves, prisoners in the world of habit which dulls and petrified” (p. 36).

“If you make a mistake, you learn from it. If you never make a mistake, you’re never the wiser. “ p. 257

“But I can understand now why people read, why they like to get lost in somebody else’s life. Sometimes I’ll read a sentence and it will make me sit up, jolt me, because it is something that I have recently felt but never said out loud” (p. 167).

The first part of that is trippy; Reading about someone who is reading and understanding reading as an escape while you are currently reading to escape. Weird.

“We are to be held up to the rest of the world as a mirror of their worst nightmares. scapegoats for all that is wrong in their lives.” P. 76

“...suddenly feeling even more alone, I sense the tears start again. They comfort me; they make me feel human and remind me that I am human...” p. 54

“When you see something, it can’t be unseen. When you hear a sound, it can never be unheard. I know, deep down, that this evening I have learned something that can never be unlearned. And the part of my world that is altered will never be the same.” Pg. 14

“Men have the best of this world. I hope that it will not always be so.” -Celia Williams p. 117

“Once you’ve held a book and really loved it, you forever remember the feel of it, it’s specific weight, the way it sits in your hand.”

"Having all the time in the world makes getting things done impossible" p. 77

"...I should say that kindliness and sincerity, and if I may say so - modesty - are worth far more to a man, to a husband, than all the wit and beauty in the world."

It was a deep, comfortable room, with books lining the walls to the ceiling, the sort of room a man would move from never, did he live alone; solid chairs beside a great open fire-place, baskets for the two dogs in which I felt they never sat, for the gallows in the chairs had tell-tale marks.

I was literally thinking two pages ago, "this kind of reads like 'The Royal We' by Jessica Morgan" and then I read this: " 'Is this like the Royal we?' " super weird.

"'Don't get stressed about it,' everybody said wisely, as if they were the first to pass on that hot little tip. Apparently, the moment your ovaries noticed you were worried about becoming pregnant, they refused to cooperate. Oh well, if you're going to get all huffy about it, we'll just close down" (p.12).

Three Wishes by Liane Moriarty
"You're having one of those days of accumulating misery when you argue violently with someone in a position of power: a bank teller, a dry cleaner, a three-year old" (p. 1).