More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Small children take shelter,” I murmur. “The elderly head downhill. The inexperienced follow the path of least resistance.”
The air smells like sun-soaked sap and icy streams, with an undertone of bug spray, sunscreen, and human sweat. It feels green and blue and brown, a caress against my face.
I’m a mess in so many ways. Can’t sleep through the night. Can barely make it a single hour without craving a drink. Don’t know how to live the way other people seem to know how to live. But grief. Bone-deep pain, soul-searing rage. This I understand.
“I hate pity.” “Then stop being so pathetic.”
we have all retreated someplace deep inside ourselves. My mind is a carousel of discordant memories.
I don’t speak. In this day and age, we all talk too much and hear too little. Listening has become a forgotten art that the world is sorely missing.
What do you remember most—the moments your parents genuinely tried, or all the times they definitely failed? I’ve never figured out that answer. Sitting here now, I focus on the good. That this moment is beautiful and perfect, and I’m wise enough now to appreciate all the moments that came before it, even the less beautiful and less perfect ones, as they led me here.
Did he whisper his secret hopes and hidden fears to these distant pinpricks of light, trusting them to remember him, a lone human in search of comfort?
My life is filled with ghosts. Images and stories of people I never knew and, in most cases, never will. They haunt me. And yet I keep coming back for more, collecting memories that aren’t even my memories and clutching them tight to my chest. If you hoard other people’s tragedies, does that make your own easier to bear?
He isn’t from the wilderness, the locals like to say. He’s of the wilderness. And mountains never die.”
Plans give you a list of tasks to keep you from drowning in your own fear. Plans give you a feeling of control, even if it’s just an illusion at the time.
Up up up. Top of the world. Shrieking with laughter. Nothing can catch us up here. Nothing can hurt us. Nothing can go wrong. It was only on the ground that the world failed us.
