Atmosphere

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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.

She was happy, in some ways, to know that her body would decompose. That she would give back to the Earth all she had taken from it.

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

To look at the night sky is to look at parts of who you once were, who you may one day be.”

Joan was always moved by the fact that everything—all matter on Earth and beyond, up past the atmosphere, going as far as the edges of the universe, as it expands farther and farther away from us—is made from the same elements. We are made of the same things as the stars and the planets.

Of course men were uninteresting to her. They were fundamentally uninteresting.

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