Tammy

“Enough with the apologies. I can’t just forgive seventeen years of hurt all at once. But you can do better, all right? From today onward, do better. Not just for me. For my mom too.”
― Paula Stokes, Hidden Pieces

“Love is the kind of thing you have to nurture and care for. You can’t just lock it up in some faraway place if you want it to last.”
― Paula Stokes, Ferocious

“Maybe you think you’re just one person. What you do doesn’t really matter. You can read a few tweets or blog posts and then publicly render your judgment of a total stranger. Who cares? You’re just one tiny voice in a huge ocean. But the thing about tiny voices is that when they band together they can be incredibly loud. Uncomfortably loud. Sometimes that’s a good thing—a strong thing. A group of voices can wake people up to the truth. But a group of voices can be a bad thing too, because we’re not always right. Or even when we are right, sometimes the things we do to each other still aren’t okay.”
― Paula Stokes, This is How it Happened

“I get it. Traveling halfway across the world to run into the boy you grew up with, getting back together after years apart—that’s an epic fucking fairytale. I don’t blame you for being seduced by it. I guess I just thought what we had was better. You know, because it was real.”
― Paula Stokes, The Key to Everything