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Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
If you can’t make people care about the community they live in, how can you get them to care about anything?”
I’d seen Debra at her worst, and I’ve found that is often what binds women together. Men admire each other when they are at their best, but women enjoy meeting each other in pits of despair.
“It’s not your responsibility.” But whose was it, I wondered? Who was there to catch us if not our friends?
“Everyone here is so fucking self-conscious. Sometimes I want to grab them and say, ‘The world will not fall apart if you tell the truth.’”
We believed what we chose to believe, what was in our best interest.
“I’m so angry, you know?” Debra said, and I put my arms around her and told her that I forgave her, of course I forgave her. Because even though Debra was impossible and difficult and messy and careless—not to mention certain about things she knew nothing about—she was also my friend and even then I knew she always would be, even when I didn’t like her very much. Later, I’d drop people for far less, but Debra had imprinted on me. It’s like that with the people who know us when we’re young, when we’re still figuring out the world and how we might fit into it.
“That’s because you’re a crumb eater, Isabel, and you think you deserve scraps. I can’t wait to see what you do when you realize you deserve a place at the fucking table.”
What made a girl a woman? Through what mechanism did we pass from one state to another?
