Atmosphere

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

But I think it is also the relief I feel that those stars are immovable. Nothing you or I could do will ever alter them. They are so much bigger than us. And they will not change within our lifetime. We can succeed or fail, get it right or get it wrong, love and lose the ones we love, and still the Summer Triangle will point south. And in that way, I know everything will be some type of okay—as impossible as that can seem sometimes.

but also the very last person who should have to do the job.

Forshadowing?

Human intelligence and curiosity, our persistence and resilience, our capacity for long-term planning, and our ability to collaborate have led the human race here.

preparedness over impulsivity, calmness over boldness.

The shock was that Barbara had called Joan.

This is how it would feel if liv called me...

but you’re going to the stars. You’re thinking so much bigger.”

fate.

“I mean, joking aside, if it does come down to you versus me, or me versus that guy Griff, or whatever—I hope I don’t do it with both elbows out, knocking everyone down. I hope I wait until I fully earn it instead of trying to steal the chance out from under someone. I want it bad, but still, I hope I do it right.”

I can relate this to rowing and making a boat and now with my job working for my goals and EARNING it

‘You have to have something on the line, for it to be called character.’ ”

Astronomy was history. Because space was time. And that was the thing she loved most about the universe itself. When you look at the red star Antares in the southern sky, you are looking over thirty-three hundred trillion miles away. But you are also looking more than five hundred and fifty years into the past. Antares is so far away that its light takes five hundred and fifty years to reach your eye on Earth. Five hundred and fifty light-years away. So when you look out at the sky, the farther you can see, the further back you are looking in time. The space between you and the star is time.

To look up at the nighttime sky is to become a part of a long line of people throughout human history who looked above at that same set of stars. It is to witness time unfolding.

the idea that astronomy advances because of any one great mind struck her as simplistic. It was a collective pursuit, groups and cultures building upon and learning from what came before them.

Teamwork in everything is important

From afar, Joan could spot what everyone else could not see up close. Like how botanists know more about leaves than trees do.

we honor the people we have lost by referring to them as being ‘on an eternal mission.’

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

My God, she thought, what else can I do?

Joan was trying to stay irritated, but it was a helium balloon and she was losing her grip on the string.

Love this

“Ford,” she says. There is so much she wants to say to Vanessa that she can’t. “Everyone here believes that you have the ability to land Navigator safely today on your own.”

Started to cry here

He died doing something very few people could do. And he gave up his life to do it, to serve his country.

Because the world had decided that to be soft was to be weak, even though in Joan’s experience 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.

Success would be found together or not at all.

“Laugh at those stupid jokes. I hate it when you encourage them.” “I think maybe you just need to lighten up.” “You sound like them,” Donna said. “Well, isn’t that sort of the point?” Lydia said, dropping the center of the tent onto the ground and giving up. “If you’d just go with the flow, they’d stop eventually. And see that we’re just like them.” “I don’t want to be like them,” Joan said.

I get both sides here - when i was younger all i did was laugh at the jokes but now as i get older i see joans point; however i feel a level of balance here is necessary

“No,” Donna said. “Nobody knew that.”

Donna is my fav

“Please don’t. Let me have her.” Thea will never remember the way it felt to be in her father’s arms like that. Her father will be someone people tell Thea about.

Gravity is underrated. It gives us something to fight against.

I might be a great astronaut. But if all I’m doing with what I’ve learned is using it for myself, what kind of legacy is that?

she does want to get Hank’s body home, because every time she went

to her father’s gravestone, she knew her father’s body wasn’t really there. And it always mattered to her.

Joan was mortified for her.

And I need to listen to you.” Joan smiled at her. You had to keep the bar low with Lydia, but if you did, she would eventually surprise you.

Tough people lile that almost always come around. that is why it is best to stay in your lane but also be a supplortive teammate to all

unmarked door, waiting for her to discover it.

What better reason do we have to take care of this Earth and everything on it than the knowledge that we are of one another?”

“The trees need our breath, and our breath needs the trees,”

I want to spend my energy thinking not of how my actions might be frowned upon by a man in the sky, but how my actions affect every living and non-living thing around me. Life is God. My life is tied to yours, and to everyone’s on this planet. How does that not instantly make us more in debt to one another? And also offer us the comfort that we are not alone?”

Just the act of falling in love was to agree to a broken heart.

Joan’s love for her had not been Joan’s gift to Frances, but Frances’s gift to Joan.

She believed in a God that put a young girl without a father in proximity to a family friend with an airplane. She believed in a God that had pulled her to Joshua Tree to fall irretrievably in love with the stars. She believed in a God that had led them to this very moment: the two of them flying together, so safe, above the Grand Canyon.

Love this - god has a path for everyone

You could not have a little of everything you wanted.

But to love Frances was to be always saying goodbye to the girl Frances used to be and falling in love again with the girl Frances was becoming.

Joan had long known that if you’re unhappy, it’s hard to watch other people be happy. So it stood to reason that the opposite was true, too. That if you were happy, you wanted others to be happy alongside you. This was the only reason Joan could think of for why Barbara suddenly seemed so immensely proud of her.

“I want to fly,” Frances said. “Someday.” “Then someday you will,” Joan said. “Who knows,” Barbara told her. “Maybe one day Daniel will buy you a plane.”

The duality of the female population and the priorities of them be your own woman and make your own money and love a man but never rely on him financially

we all succeed or fail together.

“That it’s not about you,” Joan said. “Choices like this are dictated by what is best for the mission, not the individual. And if you’re asking my advice, I think that’s where you sometimes go wrong. You’re not smarter or harder working than anyone here. Yes, you’re brilliant and driven, but you’re surrounded by people who are just as brilliant and just as driven. You’re not better than anyone on this crew. You cannot be. And you cannot want to be. If you are, you won’t be prepared to do the hard stuff, if you’re too worried about whether you’re winning some imaginary race. It’s about the collective, not the individual.”

The best teams are shaped around this

“Happiness is so hard to come by. I don’t understand why anyone would begrudge anyone else for managing to find some of it.”

Her parents misunderstood her, the same way she’d misunderstood herself for so long.

had one grandmother I never saw and one who, when she died, I cried for three days. The word isn’t what matters. It’s the specific relationship.

The difference between the outside of her—so controlled—and what ran inside her—such thrill—was jarring and hard to reconcile.

How was it that two people, right next to each other, given the rarest of perspectives, could draw two totally opposite conclusions? When Joan looked back at the Earth, she was overwhelmed with her own life’s meaning—and the fact that the only meaning it could have was the meaning she gave it.

“I could have lent you money.” “I didn’t want your money! I wanted a life! I want a life with a man who loves me and pays the bills and provides a beautiful home and makes sure my kid gets an incredible education so that she never ends up like me! That’s what I want, Joan! I don’t want your charity.”

The duality of women - make ypur own money

character was built through bones breaking and healing,