Holly > Holly's Quotes

“Funny how in a city of 750,000 one could feel so utterly alone and vulnerable - half a million people and no one to protect you. It's partially the nature of the location of Winnipeg. Alone in the Prairies, in the middle of the country, where the wind blows hard and the snow can pile up around your feet while you wait to cross the street.”
― Jan Guenther Braun, Somewhere Else: A Novel

“Happiness is pure kitsch; we come into the world to suffer and learn.”
― Isabel Allende, La suma de los días

“[He] put a tape on the car stereo and when I heard Neil Young singing, I shouted for him to turn it off, saying I was allergic to that whiny goddamn bastard.”
― Nadia Bozak, Orphan Love

“It's piles and piles of emotional homework forever if you ever want to qualify as a grown-up”
― Mary H.K. Choi, Emergency Contact

“You will die.

That's the beautiful, terrible, simple truth of it. A biological fact, a medical reality and a genealogical axiom. You can walk around it, rationalise it in faith or medicate against it, but it won't change the ultimate outcome. Implicit in the fact of your existence is the inevitability of your extinction.

You will die. Maybe soon. Maybe not for many years. But you will.”
― Stephen McGann, Flesh and Blood: A History of My Family in Seven Maladies

“A family isn’t simply a passive inheritance. It’s defined by the bonds its members choose, and not just the bonds assigned by genetics. Each time a family member joins their life to a biological stranger in marriage, adoption or through having children, a new clan joins itself to our family tree at the junction point of the union. New ancestors are fused with ours. New descendants are sired by the mingling of separate genetic codes. Without this chosen love our gene pool would stagnate. Without this new family, an assigned inheritance couldn’t continue. Genes might specify the way we’re put together, but without our human will to love beyond those specifications, a family can’t be all the things it might be.”
― Stephen McGann, Flesh and Blood: A History of My Family in Seven Maladies

“Lonely people tend to scoop out larger spaces of isolation to burrow into by cutting themselves off from others - triggering the self-fulfilling prophecy of preventing rejection by avoiding opportunities for connection. Bonds are weakened, contact is reduced, loneliness fissures outward.”
― Kristen Radtke, Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness

“Avoid adding these dismissive words or phrases when sharing about your emotions.

* Lol”
― Whitney Goodman, Toxic Positivity: Keeping It Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy