More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
When the darkest part of you meets the darkest part of me, it creates light.
“The hole is loneliness,” said Cleo quietly. “Why’s that?” said Audrey. “You can’t stand above someone and tell them to get out of it,” she said. “Or teach or preach it out of them. You have to be in it with them.”
Two parts contentment, one part desire. It seemed a good formula for living, though one she had not mastered yet.
“You know what the best antidote for existential ennui is?” he asks. “Tell me,” I say. “Physical pain.”
I will not say anything stupid for the rest of the day. If that means I do not say anything for the rest of the day, or every day thereafter, so be it.
I want to dream a sky / Full of hummingbirds. I would like to die in such a storm.
Okay, so I am not pretty. Some people have diabetes. Some people have six toes. Some people get caught in forest fires and suffer third-degree burns all over their body. Some people have headaches they ignore for months, then finally go to the doctor only to find out it’s a brain tumor that kills them within weeks having never achieved their life’s potential. I did not end up pretty. Big whoop.
“Happiness is like the Hollywood sign. It’s big, it’s unattainable, and even if you do make it up there, what’s there to do but come back down?”
Life is a constant renegotiation with one’s own vanity, after all.”
He’d ask if her father was dying and if that was why she was always a little sad, even when she said she wasn’t. He’d ask her what it was like to have a father. He’d ask her if she believed you could be in love with two people at once. If she knew what it felt like to love someone you shouldn’t. If she knew what it felt like not to love yourself like you should.
I know that’s not ethical, but it’s how I feel. It’s how the human heart works. Your life is more precious than any other life to me. Even more—even more than my own.”
It struck her that adult life was endlessly harsh and exciting, something to be overwhelmed by again and again, like a wave beating her down as she tried to stand.
