More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
She could travel the globe or travel through history, feel love or hate or envy or hope, any day she pleased, any time she checked out a new book.
“Grief. The moment when you realize that your world and the world are entirely separate. When your world has come to a grinding halt, when you’re drowning and flailing about, and the world just rolls on without you.”
the grief and traumas of history—both personal and communal—were meant to be carried, not discarded. Like weights to be worn all our lives, something to recognize, not to be rid of.
she was chasing after intangibles: independence, impact, respect. A life where those around her would stop and stare and think, Wow, she really made something of herself.
She honestly felt a little sorry for those cursed to wander the earth, who might never know the comfort of feeling truly grounded, the honeyed pleasure of simply having a place you could always call home.
Love makes people do wild things, things they can’t understand, things they may have sworn they would never, ever do. So, were they ever to lose that love, I imagine they might do just about anything.
But grief was love in its second shape.
Actually, poppies have a remarkable ability to grow in even extremely poor soil. After the First World War, they were one of the earliest flowers to begin growing again among the wreckage of the battlefields in Europe. They’re often found in places where natural disasters or human behaviors have caused a massive disruption in the land. Their seeds wait in the soil, dormant, until they can emerge in the wake of catastrophe and help make way for other plants to return. Like they’ve been sleeping, just waiting to wake up and bring new life to the earth. Poppies are a ruderal species, which means
...more
