Riva Sciuto

“I feel like a blank space covered in skin. There is no place for this walking blank thing among the warm beings, the ones with something inside, the people who can have a drink and laugh at a joke and look into their features and see something other than the wretchedness I see in mine, the day that immeasurably thin skin falls away and I simply disappear. Into the ocean. My ocean. The one that will swallow me whole if I let it.”
― Mikel Jollett, Hollywood Park

“Dying has taught me a great deal about living—about facing hard truths consciously, about embracing the suffering as well as the joy.”
― Julie Yip-Williams, The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After

“Walk through the fire and you will emerge on the other end, whole and stronger. I promise. You will ultimately find truth and beauty and wisdom and peace. You will understand that nothing lasts forever, not pain, or joy. You will understand that joy cannot exist without sadness. Relief cannot exist without pain. Compassion cannot exist without cruelty. Courage cannot exist without fear. Hope cannot exist without despair. Wisdom cannot exist without suffering. Gratitude cannot exist without deprivation. Paradoxes about in this life. Living is an exercise in navigating within them.”
― Julie Yip-Williams, The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After

“It seemed like writers have the most important job in the world, to make books, to create a connection, a kind of telepathy between two minds in which one can inhabit the other.”
― Mikel Jollett, Hollywood Park