excerpts

It would be so much better if we could share our insecurity, if we could all venture inside ourselves and realize that green beans and vitamin C, however much they nurture us, cannot save lives, nor sustain our souls.

--Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

I remembered a summer day in 1970 when John and I stopped for a red light on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans and noticed the driver of the next car suddenly slump over his steering wheel. His horn sounded. Several pedestrians ran up. A police officer materialized. The light changed, we drove on. John had been unable to get this image out of his mind. There he was, he had kept saying later. He was alive and then he was dead and we were watching. We saw him at the instant it happened. We knew he was dead before his family did.
Just an ordinary day. 
"And then--gone." 

--Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

If you are sad, ask yourself why you are sad. Then pick up the phone and call someone and tell him or her the answer to that question. If you don't know anyone, call the operator and tell him or her. Most people don't know the operator has to listen, it is a law. Also, the postman is not allowed to go inside your house, but you can talk to him on public property for up to four minutes or until he wants to go, whichever comes first. 

--Miranda July, "The Shared Patio"

Maybe that was just life? One orphaning after the next. They should tell you when you’re born: have a suitcase heart, be ready to travel. 

--Gabrielle Zevin, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac