"Outside the weather was bitter, but he'd opened the window in their little bedroom to smoke, holding his cigarette close to the sill so the curling trail would weave out into the night rather than filling the apartment, because now that she was too old and blind to smoke herself, Grandma complained of the smell. Not to mention the girls, of course, whose criticisms never ended. Over time, he'd become defiant about it, in spite of the killing cough, the hawking he had to undertake morning and night over the bedroom sink, like shoveling snow from the pathway to his lungs. Because why not? Why shouldn't he kill himself smoking, if he chose? Why couldn't anything at all be granted him without judgement and condemnation?" - This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud

“I look at my girls, my brilliant young women. I want them to think I was better than I was, and I want to tell them the truth in case the truth will be useful.” - Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

"My mother imbued me with a love of libraries. The reason why I finally embraced this book project - wanted, and then needed, to write it - was my realization that I was losing her. I found myself wondering whether a shared memory can exist if one of the people sharing it no longer remembers it. Is the circuit broken, the memory darkened? My mother was the one person besides me who knew what those gauzy afternoons had been like. I knew I was writing this because I was trying hard to preserve those afternoons. I convinced myself that committing them to a page meant the memory was saved, somehow, from the corrosive effect of time." - pg 92, The Library Book, Susan Orlean

"Grief this deep was a silent, lonely thing. From now on, the only time Leni would hear her mother's voice would be in her own mind, thoughts channeled through another woman's consciousness, a continual quest for connection, for meaning. Like all motherless girls, Leni would become an emotional explorer, trying to uncover the lost part of her, the mother who had carried and nurtured and loved her. Leni would become both mother and child; through her, Mama would still grow and age. She would never be gone, not as long as Leni remembered her. " - pg 540, The Great Alone, Kristin Hannah

the monday after pride weekend should be a paid holiday 😭

handing out Paul Hollywood handshakes except it’s for fucking me good