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.

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

“When somebody’s too smooth, there’s nothing to grab on to. Now that you’ve got a little edge to you, I can hang on.”

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

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.

“Because people never fall in love with who they should. This whole world is full of stories of people falling in love with exactly who they weren’t supposed to.”

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 marveled at how easy Barbara’s inner life must be. How entirely undemanding of yourself it was to believe that everything happened to you. And everything was about you. And that your feelings were the only ones that mattered. Worse yet, to afford yourself the role of the victim always—regardless of how grotesquely it required you to twist reality—so that you never had to look in the mirror and admit you were the perpetrator.