The Book of Lost and Found

by Lucy Foley

The most important thing is to continue to do the thing you want to, to keep battling on. That, in my opinion, is the main part of the struggle. Most give up when it seems too difficult.”

This is what it is to be young: this is what people mean when they talk about the freedom and folly of youth, the reckless glamour of it. It is the purest sort of intoxication, this flying over rough ground so that the breath is knocked out of you, whizzing through the world with such power and grace and danger.

To truly create, to innovate, you cannot care about the sensibilities you may offend. You cannot mind that some people—your own mother, perhaps—will violently dislike your work.

you must be brave, because it takes courage to strike out alone. You must not be afraid of ridicule; indeed, you may want to court it. To be able to elicit a strong reaction of any sort is a powerful thing. God forbid that people should tolerate your work.”

the most precious memories can be damaged with too much handling, as with all delicate objects.

end. Because, if the nature of the work is right, there is great reward to be found. The feeling that one has a place in the world, that one is useful in some small way, is not to be underrated.

It’s a sort of arrogance, I suppose. Not believing that it is going to affect you.

‘War happens to people, one by one.’ That’s exactly it, you see. Until it happens to you, you have no way of understanding it, let alone imagining it. Until then, it is simply a monster under the bed.

in staying, I was acting not out of courage but from that same arrogance, that belief in one’s own invulnerability. Believing, blindly, that everything would work out all right.”

think we carry all of our past selves with us, in tight layers. Somewhere within you is that girl, however many other, new selves you may have grown in the years since. She’s what holds you together, at the very center.”

In many ways, my life has been rather like a record of the lost and found. Perhaps all lives are like that. Lost: love; found: independence. Lost: a daughter; found: a granddaughter.” I felt something expand inside me at this, almost a pain—but of the best sort.

You want a love story. But, you see, I’ve given you a love story. It just doesn’t all work out the way one might have written it.