patty

“Wit is the most dangerous talent you can possess. It must be guarded with great discretion and good-nature, otherwise it will create you many enemies.”
—John Gregory
A Father’s Legacy to His Daughters, 1774”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Fever 1793

“Parents, she thought, learned to survive touching their children less and less. As a baby Pearl had clung to her; she’d worn Pearl in a sling because whenever she’d set her down, Pearl would cry. There’d scarcely been a moment in the day when they had not been pressed together. As she got older, Pearl would still cling to her mother’s leg, then her waist, then her hand, as if there was something in her mother she needed to absorb through the skin. Even when she had her own bed, she would often crawl into Mia’s in the middle of the night and burrow under the old patchwork quilt, and in the morning they would wake up tangled, Mia’s arm pinned beneath Pearl’s head, or Pearl’s legs thrown across Mia’s belly. Now, as a teenager, Pearl’s caresses had become rare—a peck on the cheek, a one-armed, half-hearted hug—and all the more precious because of that. It was the way of things, Mia thought to herself, but how hard it was. The occasional embrace, a head leaned for just a moment on your shoulder, when what you really wanted more than anything was to press them to you and hold them so tight you fused together and could never be taken apart. It was like training yourself to live on the smell of an apple alone, when what you really wanted was to devour it, to sink your teeth into it and consume it, seeds, core, and all.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“Life was a battle, and Mother a tired and bitter captain”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Fever 1793

“Our love was unwavering, unflappable, greater than anything presented by the Bible, the Torah, and the Qur'an combined. That is, where we'd go, what would occur, what we lost and gained together, what we suffered and championed through, what we sometimes wished to recall and force ourselves to forget, our lives, the occasions and circumstances, were more than everything, more than forever, more than even the truth.”
― Matthew Aaron Goodman, Hold Love Strong