When the Stars Go Dark

by Paula McLain

If you think about it, most of us have very little choice about what we’re going to become or who we’re going to love, or what place on earth chooses us, becoming home. All we can do is go when we’re called, and pray we’ll still be taken in.

Any surface could hide sadness just beneath.

I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. How anyone with a hole inside them will search on and on, sometimes all their lives, for ways to fill it.

“Because everyone wants to be looked for, whether they realize it or not.”

When things got hard and you felt shaky, she liked to say, you could hit your knees wherever you were, and the world would be there to catch you.

When you love someone, there’s risk. You can’t avoid it.”

Women are stronger because they have to be.

Getting your heart broken is the privilege of being human, Eden used to say. I didn’t know what she meant then. My heart had been broken lots of times, and I was supposed to say thank you? Now, all these years later, I’m at least starting to see that she was really talking about the whole journey. That it’s impossible to be alive and not get hurt sometimes, not if you’re doing it right.

“Sometimes our dreams can be the most revealing things about us. Who we are when no one’s looking, who we believe we’re truly supposed to be, if we can get there.”

I don’t believe forgiveness is something we have to kill ourselves trying to earn. It’s already here, all around us, like rain. We just have to let it in.”

“The people we love never leave us, Anna. You know that already. That’s what I mean by spirit. I mean love.”