Status Updates From Some Features of Living Mat...

“What a peculiar balance between desire to be wanted and the fear of being unwanted it is that keeps us safely moored in longstanding romantic love like a sailor on a sloppy deck in a tossing storm ready to be capsized or thrown overboard by the next big wave.”

“Fiddle music and candle-light are just fancy, nonpoisonous names for getting drunk.”

“Yeah, but you’re my spawn. You came from me. From your mother and I. Written in my own heart’s blood, light of my life, from my corpus to yours. My heart was the metronome to the cadence of which yours learned to sing.”

God this book makes me feeeeel things

“You’ll remember home, even cut off like you’ll be.”

This book has this mountain kid romanticizing Louisiana, which is a feat!

"These were very rational fears: Weather, Friendship & the Loss of Friendship, the Loss of Love. These were real worries, and it turns out that sometimes it felt a lot like suffering just to exist, just to love and be loved, to live that vulnerably, juggling bubbles with your heart" (43).

"Sometimes getting hung up on a single word or phrase someone chooses to use or to be all-too-ready to respond with something witty, perceptive, helpful, or thought-provoking, is a sure way of misunderstanding them" (28).

"I think you think I meant it as some kind of loaded question, but I just meant, I guess I want to picture to myself what it will be like for the little ones. Not anxiety about it. Just empathy, I want to understand" (11).