Shannon Berryessa

“I’m the princess in an ivory tower, except every brick is made of history, and I built this prison myself.”
― Jodi Picoult, Leaving Time

“A good movie had never once affected me in the same life-changing way a good book could. Books had the power to alter my view of the world forever. A great movie could change my perceptions for a day.”
― Pat Conroy, Beach Music

“memory is linked to strong emotion, and that negative moments are like scribbling with permanent marker on the wall of the brain. But there’s a fine line between a negative moment and a traumatic one. Negative moments get remembered. Traumatic ones get forgotten, or so warped that they are unrecognizable,”
― Jodi Picoult, Leaving Time

“Early, I indentured myself to the five horizontal lines where black notes were written on a sheet of music. It is a place of world of signs and notations that speaks to me with perfect clarity. It is a place of time signatures, fermatas, ledger lines, grace notes, and demisemiquavers that are the common tongue and heritage of musicians all over the world. . . . It is something I cannot imagine being without. For without music, life is a journey through a desert that has not ever heard the rumor of God. In music’s sweet harmony, I had all the proof I needed of a God who held the earth together between the staffs, where the heavens lay. Here, he marked all the lines and spaces with notes so perfect that they praised all of his creation with their beauty.”
― Pat Conroy, Beach Music