Jenny

“But where you succeed will never matter so much as where you fail.”
― Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“Empathy isn't just something that happens to us - a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain - it's also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It's made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should, or because it's asked for, but this doesn't make our caring hollow. This confession of effort chafes against the notion that empathy should always rise unbidden, that genuine means the same thing as unwilled, that intentionality is the enemy of love. But I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.”
― Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams

“It turns out that you don't end up with the people you love; by definition, you end up with the ones who stay.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, The Path of Minor Planets

“In such a way is freedom of thought lost... By small cuts. By small acts of disapproval. By a thousand discouragements of spirit.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, 44 Scotland Street