Cindy Knoke

“I’m gettin’ tired way past where sleep rests me.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how obvious it is that you're having one, it is somehow not obvious to you. I'm fine, you think. So what if I watched TV for twenty-four straight hours yesterday. I'm not falling apart. I'm just lazy. Why it's better to think yourself lazy than think yourself in distress, I'm not sure. But it was better. More than better: it was vital.”
― Tara Westover, Educated: A Memoir

“To admit uncertainty is to admit to weakness, to powerlessness, and to believe in yourself despite both. It is a frailty but in this frailty there is a strength: the conviction to live in your own mind, and not in someone else's. I have often wondered if the most powerful words I wrote that night came not from anger or rage, but from doubt: I don't know. I just don't know.

Not knowing for certain, but refusing to give way to those who claim certainty, was a privilege I had never allowed myself.”
― Tara Westover

“A public official must understand from his first day in office that any show of initiative will signal the end of his career because he isn't there to be meritorious but to reach his level of incompetence with dignity.”
― Isabelle Allende