The Cliffs

by J. Courtney Sullivan

She liked herself best when she was controlled, composed, invulnerable. That was the woman she wanted to be.

Sometimes the tragedies of a person’s life didn’t happen neatly, single file, one at a time, but all at once, so that it was impossible to know how you felt about any part of the whole.

History could only ever be as meaningful as those alive were willing to make it.

The definition of a lifetime, as she saw it, was when the people most important to you wouldn’t recognize the ones who previously filled their roles. Make new friends but keep the old,

I never had an image in mind for how life ought to look. I believe that to be the most freeing fact of my existence.

In every graveyard in every town in all the world, there lie buried stories more remarkable and strange than a name, a date, a designation on stone could ever in a million years convey.

Human beings did so much damage to one another just by being alive. To the people they loved most, and to the ones they knew so little about that they could convince themselves they weren’t even people.

That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.