More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Don’t confuse intensity of emotion with quality of emotion, baby, when I’d gotten tangled up with class heartbreaker Tommy Ralston. The more he’d hit on my girlfriends, the harder I’d worked to keep him. It was like I was addicted to whatever made me feel most intensely, even though it was hurting me. Pain is not love, Mac. Love makes you feel good.
Don’t lose yourself in anger, Mac. It’s gasoline. You can burn it as fuel, or you can use it to torch everything you care about and end up standing on a scorched battlefield, with everybody dead, even you—only your body doesn’t have the good grace to quit breathing.”
Strength wasn’t about being able to do everything alone. Strength was knowing when to ask for help and not being too proud to do it.
I struggle with this so bad....
Life’s an ocean, full of waves. All are dangerous. All can drown you. Under the right circumstances, even the gentlest swell can turn tidal. Hopping waves is for the weekend warrior. Choose one, ride it out. It increases your odds of survival.”
Life didn’t explode in the sunshine and pretty places. Life took the strongest root with a little bit of rain and a whole lot of shit for fertilizer.
Daddy told me once—when I’d said something about how perfect his relationship with Mom was—that I should have seen the first five years of their marriage, that they’d fought like hellions, crashed into each other like two giant stones. That eventually they’d eroded each other into the perfect fit, become a single wall, nestled into each other’s curves and hollows, her strengths chinking his weaknesses, her weaknesses reinforced by his strengths.
That's how it should be....
“Did he bother pointing out that everything the king had done, he’d done for her? Did she think of that before she decided to kill herself? Did it ever occur to her that sometimes a willingness to turn dark for someone else might just be a fucking virtue?”
It’s funny how, when things seem the darkest, moments of beauty present themselves in the most unexpected places.
There’s comfort in knowing your limits. It’s a safety zone. Most people find theirs, get in it, and stay there for the rest of their lives.
There’s a fine line between being stupid and knowing you have to test your limits if you want to do any real living at all.
The person who truly lives has precious few moments of safety, learns to thrive in any kind of storm.
Did we call the things of our heart our own, whether they were or not?
the heart had reasons of which reason knew nothing,
