Megan Follows Quotes

There are many things I don’t know, but quite a few I do. I know you can’t be lost if you know where you are. I know that life is full of precious and fragile things, and not all of them are pretty. I know that the sun follows the moon and makes days, one after another. Time passes. The world turns, and we turn with it, and though we can never go back to the beginning, sometimes, we can start again.

There are many things I don't know, but quite a few I do. I know you can't be lost if you know where you are. I know that life is full of precious and fragile things, and not all of them are pretty. I know that the sun follows the moon and makes days, one after another. Time passes. The world turns, and we turn with it, and though we can never go back to the beginning, sometimes, we can start again.

She reached out and touched the king’s face, cupping his cheek in her hand. “Just a nightmare,” he said, his voice still rough. The queen’s voice was cool. “How embarrassing,” she said, looking at his maimed arm. The king looked up then, and followed her gaze. If it was embarrassing to wake like a child screaming from a nightmare, how much more embarrassing to be the reason your husband woke screaming. A quick smile visited the king’s face. “Ouch,” he said, referring to more than the pain in his side. “Ouch,” he said again as the queen gathered him into her arms.

He waved at his attendants. "I dragged them like a ball and chain all the way across the palace and back." "If sterner measures are called for, we can find a larger ball and chain." The queen turned and disappeared into the partment. "Oh, dear," Eugenides muttered as he followed...The queen's sterner measures, dispensed by the Eddisian Ambassador, arrived before dawn.

Costis followed, telling himself that it wasn't true that he and the king and even the stone under their feet were nothing but tissue, transparently thin, and that for a moment, the only real thing in the universe had been there on the parapet with the king.

Don't talk to strangers. Don't do drugs. Don't smoke. Don't drink and drive. Don't have sex. Wear a condom. Wear sunblock. Wear a seat belt. Wear a helmet. If you see something, say something. Just say no. Stop, drop, and roll. Stop, look, and listen. Look both ways before you cross the street... Safety is an illusion. Bad things can happen to anyone at any time, whether you follow the rules or not. You can check left, check right, check left again before you step off the curb and into the crosswalk, but that won't stop an anonymous asshole in his shitty pickup from putting you in intensive care...

Bad things can happen to anyone at any time, whether you follow the rules or not.

The pause that followed felt very important. It was one of those moments in a marriage when you have to make a critical decision with alarming speed and the consequences could last a long time, even forever.

Sometimes you didn't know what you were after, I thought. Maybe there was a speck on the horizon and you followed it, hoping for the best.

To make the right decision you must understand both paths before you,” he said quietly. “You must know your demons before you know whether to follow them.

She loved her father with ease and loved her mother with effort.

Spoilers follow I started reading the third act of Hamlet, and I got about two pages in when I realized there's no point. I am never going back to school. I am never going to the university. I am never going to watch wolves stalk through the northern forests or elephants graze on the savanna. I am never going to have sex or get married or raise a family. I'm never going to have a first apartment, a first house, a first car. I'm never

The Sin Eater walks among us, unseen, unheard Sins of our flesh become sins of Hers Following Her to the grave, unseen, unheard The Sin Eater Walks Among Us.

There aren’t actually heroes or victims or villains. Not in our story, and probably not in anyone else’s. I know you know this deep down: it’s all in the edit.

She wanted the answer to the question. She was living in the before of something, and she was getting tired of it. The dangerous thing about the way she felt . . . was that she didn't know exactly what she wanted to happen, and she didn't care that she didn't know. Almost any change would do.

She had promised to stop denying the truth, to strive always to confront things as they were no matter how much it hurt, but she felt that this was one area an exception could be made. To stand in these rooms and believe however briefly that death was a thing which happened only in a foreign country, and could not follow you home.

And morning came… It still comes. Our God is here, Emmanuel, among us, always coming towards us, always standing behind us, always standing up for us, always standing with us in solidarity in communion asking us to come with Him now as disciple, as follower, as believer, as a friend, as intimate beloved child of God, now and forever.

Of course the servants had chosen not to follow me; I’d failed them already by refusing to be a man they could believe in.

The frustrating part of it, writing a book she wasn't really writing, was that she had been good at this once, when she was young.

She wanted to be what she already was, even if nobody knew it yet: a celebrity. A person, exaggerated.

Her aloneness was so random, so total and unprovoked . . .

She hadn't planned on having another beer, but then...when did she ever plan to drink another one? They usually just followed one after the other like stepping stones set into a stream, and she hopped along them one at a time until she lost her balance and fell into the drink.

In advising the heads of state to learn from tragedy rather than perpetuate its existence Robert Kennedy excalimed, "Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live." We have a tendency to dwell on tragedy and use it as a justification for tragic occurrences that follow,rather than parse the tragedy, taking from it important lessons and using those lessons to avoid similar tragedies.

Grieving people are met with impatience precisely because they are failing the cultural storyline of overcoming adversity. If you don’t “transform,” if you don’t find something beautiful inside this, you’ve failed. And if you don’t do it quickly, following that narrative arc from incident to transformation within our collective attention span, you’re not living the right story.

Everyone has a temptation; a weakness that they would yield to. Mine is you. Not only you, but your love. For your love is unique. For you are the other half of my soul. I feel you, even when you are not there. It's like a shadow. You are my shadow. Your love follows me every step I tread.

You are always someone’s example. Someone is always trying to follow in your footsteps. What will you leave them that is behind you?

It’s all about the edit.

But every time she remembered her phone wasn't there, she felt relieved, and free all over again. Like she'd been given more life to live.

She was thinking that all that stretched in front of her was doing things she didn't want to do.

I’m going to tell you the same thing I’ve been telling you since you were ten years old, Orla,” she said quietly, like she was trying not to embarrass her. “It’s not good to be a follower.

But it didn't really matter how much time she spent clicking around his life, how many times she entered his name into a search box or how many days she managed not to. She was always waiting, still.

Yeah. That boy over there. He’s my friend.' My gaze followed his pointing finger toward a little boy wearing a stuffed steering wheel attached around his waist and running around a racetrack laid out on the floor. 'Oh, yeah? What’s his name?' 'I don’t know.' Simon shrugged, unconcerned, and headed back to the playground. I watched him leap right into the game with a friend whose name didn’t matter.

Each confrontation between Jesus and another person or group reveals what we do to each other, personally and on a public level. Each is an indictment against Christians, followers of the man crucified, the suffering servant, the Lamb of God.

Our parents tread the frozen river first. They crack the ice, their feet get wet, sometimes they even sink. They take the risks, so your feet stay dry. But not following their path doesn’t always mean going in an opposite direction. You just have to avoid the cracks.

I took a step back toward the stairs but hesitated, recognizing my own boot print in the ash. It was small, like Elizabeth's, and yet the steps were tight and determined, like Henri Moreau's had been. I wouldn't follow in Father's footsteps anymore. I wouldn't follow in Elizabeth's, either. I walked through the ash. The only footsteps I'd make would be my own.

Eddis looked around as if recalling a question that had nagged at her for several hours. "Where's Eugenides?" she asked. For a moment the Attolian queen was immobile, her smile gone as if it had never been. The horse under her threw up its head as if the bit had twitched against its delicate mouth. "Locked in a room," Attolia said flatly. "In Ephrata." The smile faded from Eddis' face. "I ordered the other prisoners released," Attolia explained. "I forgot that I had him locked up separately. I doubt my sensechal will have released him without my specific instruction to do so." "You forgot?" Eddis asked. "I forgot," Attolia said firmly, daring Eddis to contradict her. "You will marry him?" Eddis asked, hesitant again. "I said I would," snapped Attolia, and turned her horse away. Eddis followed. When they joined their officers, Attolia gave brisk orders and then rode on, heading back toward Ephrata without waiting for Eddis.

There was one main difference between writing now and writing when she was in second grade: back then, she didn’t own screens. Now, whenever a sentence of hers unfurled into something awkward or just never began at all, she gave up. She let her eyes jump from her drab Word document to the brighter planes of her phone and TV. Suddenly it would be 1:00 a.m., and she would be tapping out half-dream run-ons—into her manuscript if she was lucky, Facebook if she wasn’t.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, a friend of Margaret Fuller’s in Concord who followed her path to the Continent several years after her death, undertook an experiment in fictional form when he put aside writing stories in favor of longer narratives. He preferred to call his books “Romances,” not novels. “When a writer calls his work a Romance,” Hawthorne explained in his preface to The House of the Seven Gables, “he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel.” The novelist, in Hawthorne’s terms, aims to achieve “a very minute fidelity” to experience, whereas the author of a romance may “bring out or mellow the lights and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture” while still maintaining strict allegiance to “the truth of the human heart.

This is the material of my practice: I feel a lot. I feel a lot a lot of the time. I have a lot of energy, which gives me a lot of time to do stuff and then feel a lot about it. It appears that one of my life's passions has been the following: I seem to like to worry, then criticize myself, then worry some more. Occasionally, I think a couple of really solid thoughts, then I worry some more, then I worry about worrying. Then I judge myself for being a worrier who worries too much. Then I worry about how I judge myself about worrying that I worry too much. Then I worry that I judge that I worry about worrying. Then I just worry. Then I get sad that I wasted so much time worrying. Then I get sad that I feel so sad. Then I am disgusted that I felt so sad about worrying. Then I fantasize a couple things about myself and then about a couple of other people. Then I work for a while and have a couple of good thoughts.

I had grown weary of so many rules. That's the thing about every discipline. There's often a format, a belief that if you don't follow the structure to the tiniest detail, you won't get the maximum value: mantras are private. Om is the most perfect sound in the universe. Never lay a sacred text to chant on the floor. If you are in a seminar, always wear a name tag. Put your name in the upper right hand corner of every essay. Just breathe. No, scream. No, cry or hit something. But don't lose yourself. Never do yoga on the full moon. Walk clockwise around a temple. Don't eat protein and starch in the same meal. Always begin the day with fruit. Don't eat any fruit. Never utter the word of G_d. There is no God. There are multiple gods. To be a good acupuncturist, "check your stuff" at the door. Bring all of you. Never do work on the Sabbath. Don't cary anything in your pockets. Consciousness is constant work. Accept Jesus. Read the Bible. There is no suffering. Acknowledge suffering as a noble truth. Tread lightly on the Earth. Leave no trace. Make your mark. Get noticed. Travel silently through life. Attend to the needs of others. Follow your bliss. Suppress. Express. Withhold. Let go. Let it in. Get off the grid. Join the marketplace. Go toward the light. Hadn't I heard enough?

Thirty-Nine Ways to Lower Your Cortisol 1 Meditate. 2 Do yoga. 3 Stretch. 4 Practice tai chi. 5 Take a Pilates class. 6 Go for a labyrinth walk. 7 Get a massage. 8 Garden (lightly). 9 Dance to soothing, positive music. 10 Take up a hobby that is quiet and rewarding. 11 Color for pleasure. 12 Spend five minutes focusing on your breathing. 13 Follow a consistent sleep schedule. 14 Listen to relaxing music. 15 Spend time laughing and having fun with someone. (No food or drink involved.) 16 Interact with a pet. (It also lowers their cortisol level.) 17 Learn to recognize stressful thinking and begin to: Train yourself to be aware of your thoughts, breathing, heart rate, and other signs of tension to recognize stress when it begins. Focus on being aware of your mental and physical states, so that you can become an objective observer of your stressful thoughts instead of a victim of them. Recognize stressful thoughts so that you can formulate a conscious and deliberate reaction to them. A study of forty-three women in a mindfulness-based program showed that the ability to describe and articulate stress was linked to a lower cortisol response.28 18 Develop faith and participate in prayer. 19 Perform acts of kindness. 20 Forgive someone. Even (or especially?) yourself. 21 Practice mindfulness, especially when you eat. 22 Drink black and green tea. 23 Eat probiotic and prebiotic foods. Probiotics are friendly, symbiotic bacteria in foods such as yogurt, sauerkraut, and kimchi. Prebiotics, such as soluble fiber, provide food for these bacteria. (Be sure they are sugar-free!) 24 Take fish or krill oil. 25 Make a gratitude list. 26 Take magnesium. 27 Try ashwagandha, an Asian herbal supplement used in traditional medicine to treat anxiety and help people adapt to stress. 28 Get bright sunlight or exposure to a lightbox within an hour of waking up (great for fighting seasonal affective disorder as well). 29 Avoid blue light at night by wearing orange or amber glasses if using electronics after dark. (Some sunglasses work.) Use lamps with orange bulbs (such as salt lamps) in each room, instead of turning on bright overhead lights, after dark. 30 Maintain healthy relationships. 31 Let go of guilt. 32 Drink water! Stay hydrated! Dehydration increases cortisol. 33 Try emotional freedom technique, a tapping strategy meant to reduce stress and activate the parasympathetic nervous system (our rest-and-digest system). 34 Have an acupuncture treatment. 35 Go forest bathing (shinrin-yoku): visit a forest and breathe its air. 36 Listen to binaural beats. 37 Use a grounding mat, or go out into the garden barefoot. 38 Sit in a rocking chair; the soothing motion is similar to the movement in utero. 39 To make your cortisol fluctuate (which is what you want it to do), end your shower or bath with a minute (or three) under cold water.

In 2013, the Journal of the American Medical Association published the results of a study that aimed to find, once and for all, the link between mortality rates and BMI (a.k.a. is our fat really killing us?). The study was led by Katherine Flegal, an epidemiologist at the National Center for Health Statistics, and her colleagues. After analyzing ninety-seven studies of mortality rates and BMI that included almost 3 million people, Flegal found what’s known as a “U-shaped curve.” At the top ends of the curve, where death rates were the highest, are people whose BMIs categorize them as either severely underweight or severely obese. At the lowest point of the curve, where death rates are the lowest, are people whose BMI falls within the “overweight” category. Meaning that statistically, people who are overweight according to BMI had the lowest risk of death. Following the U-shaped curve, people whose BMI fell within the “mildly obese” category had no higher risk of death than people within the “normal” category. The increased mortality rate came at the extremes, either side.

Hey! Megan! Wait up!” Megan’s heart leaped out of her chest as she whirled around. There he was, running toward her through the crowd, shoving people aside to get to her. Never in her life had she been so happy to see… Doug. “Where the hell do you think you’re going, yo?” He doubled over in front of her, sweat streaming down from his temples as he gasped for breath. Megan checked behind him but didn’t see anyone else in his trail. What the…? “Are you alone?” she asked. “I gotta sit,” Doug said, wheezing. He backed up clumsily and fell into the nearest vacant chair. Megan stepped out of line and followed him uncertainly. She looked around the terminal, half expecting to find a hidden camera somewhere. This had to be a joke. Doug was chasing her down?

So when my finger brushed along downy hair along soft skin, I sucked in a breath. I’d run my hand down those ribs, I’d counted them, then followed that trail of hair down… “Well, Beau Baby? Stumped?” He was trying to throw me off, make me nervous. Fluster me. But Beau Starr didn’t get flustered. Not on camera. “That’s your treasure trail, Zane baby.” I lifted the blindfold too soon, because all I got was an eyeful of Zane’s crotch. He quickly sat down, but not before I saw the thickening bulge in his pants. He

His jaw was clenched, and he’d flushed. Jealous as fuck. Before I could check myself, Lush turned to follow my gaze. He guffawed. “I knew you two were fucking.” “What?

All of the scrolling and staring was delaying her grand life plan, the one she had always had.

I appreciate your interest in my life. I’m going to live this the way that feels right to me, and I’m not interested in discussing it.” This can be especially effective when you follow your statement with step number three, redirecting the conversation, aka changing the subject: “I’m happy to talk about something else, but this is not open for discussion.” It sounds wooden and strange, I know. But the message here—including the formal wording—is that you have a clear boundary, and you will not allow it to be breached in any way.

Don’t try to copy anyone because you don’t know why they do whatever it is they’re doing. Imagine you arrive at a cross section, would you just follow the car driving in front of you. Of course not. So why do that in life?

Her diary came alive. For years it had mostly contained despairing condemnations of her family members and dull recounting of her friendships' vagaries, followed by general summations of how disappointing her life was as a whole, but something had happened now, and she felt the great expanse of the blank pages before her like a promise of all that would follow.

Try cognitive shuffling independently by following these instructions: 1. Choose a word to begin with, such as “rain,” “ocean,” or “forest.” 2. Start with the first letter of the chosen word; in the case of “rain,” you’d start with “r.” Think of another word that starts with that letter, like “river.” If possible, create a mental image of a flowing river. If you have aphantasia and cannot visualize, simply recall the word without visualization. Now think of another word that begins with the letter “r,” such as “rhinoceros” or “rabbit,” and bring it to mind. Keep going until you have exhausted all the words starting with “r.” 3. Move on to the following letter in the original word, in this case “a.” Repeat the process by thinking of words that begin with “a” and visualizing related mental images. 4. Continue this practice, progressing through each letter of the original word, gradually allowing yourself to drift off into sleep. Should any stressful thoughts arise and capture your attention, simply acknowledge them, and gently guide your focus back to the letter you were most recently contemplating.

Cognitive shuffling is the process of intentionally scrambling your thoughts to the point where they no longer follow a logical sequence. It’s a technique that can distract and redirect your mind, and it also mimics the cognitive activity typically experienced during the initial stages of sleep. Cognitive shuffling disrupts the evaluative part of your mind and stops it from doing things like planning, problem-solving, and ruminating—thought cycles that tend to keep you awake!

Kyan wasn’t sure he should move. He stared, shirtless, at the dark doorway Nicole had gone through, and he had to force himself not to follow, not to haul her back towards him and continue feeling every curve, every toned inch.

She needed a distraction. Something… anything. If she ran, he’d only follow. The thought had barely formed before Nicole grabbed Kyan’s shirt with her uninjured hand and dragged him to her mouth. (…) Kyan stilled completely. For a moment, so did she. (…) But as her lips moved to pull away, he snapped into motion with a low sound of desire and her body answered it with a shocking lurch of its own.

They might have had all the followers, but they were never finished chasing.

Is she okay?” “Yes, but… Well, son, she’s pregnant.” Nate laughed. “Are you serious?” “Yes, I’m serious. I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but—” “Now, Dad, I thought we already had this talk.” This was followed by more laughter. “I think you breeded Janet like Chinook—” “Son, shut your mouth for a minute.” When Jack was satisfied that Nate was listening, he went on. “Because of her age and her injuries, there are a fair number of risks. She’s got hyperemesis gravi… hell, something that makes her throw up a lot, so they’re giving her IV fluids and some drug to stop the nausea.” “Poor thing. I hope it helps. Is there any risk to her or the baby right now?” “We have a lot of questions, but not many answers yet.” “God, I can’t wait to tell Megan.” “See that you don’t tell anyone else. I want to put a ring on her finger and walk her down the aisle before word of this gets out so that no one can accuse her of forcing me into marriage or say that I married her just because I got her pregnant.” For some reason, this made Nate laugh again. “A father at the age of sixty-four.” “I’m sixty-three.” “You won’t be by the time the baby arrives.” “Shit.” He hadn’t thought of that. “Seriously, congratulations, Dad. This baby is very lucky to have you as a father. Trust me on this. I know.” Jack’s throat suddenly got tight. “Thanks, son.

In Middle Earth a motley crew assembles to save the world as we know it. Four hobbits, two men, a dwaft, an elf, and a wizard, too. They rambled to destroy the ring in the mountains of Mordor. Now it is you time. Dare you join this fellowship? The rules are simple. Twelve more clues will be hidden. One for each month. You have a month to solve each riddle. Plenty of time. On the full moon of each month, the next clue will be hidden. Seek it. Leave each where you found it for the next traveler. Where does this quest lead? What is the endgame? Follow and you shall find out. You must be wise, learned, disciplined, and above all, not a FROG. If you agree to join this fellowship, proceed with your first clue: MY WORDS are legend. Legends are HISTORY, My field of study. ONE BOOK only in your shire. With your strength, the book has been found, and now you must climb to the Scholar's Shrine. Four travelers begin this talle: Hlaf Elf, Troll, Halfling, and Thief. To make it to the end, you will need to build a motley crew. Find a wizard to see you through. You walk a long and winding path to find your next clue. Shall the Half Elf teache you his songs to pass the time? Perhaps that will draw an elf lord into your presence. The road is long, and the leaves do change color. You have demonstrated your strength, and your intelligence: now you must go boldly into battle. Be wise with your strategy: though it my seem like a game, there is more to the story.

We have three rules we require you to follow,” the Caretaker continued, oblivious of her fear, “which are for your own benefit and that of your species. The first is to solve the enrichment puzzles. This will strengthen your physical and mental conditioning. The second rule is to maintain your health by eating the food we provide for you, getting ample sleep, and cooperating in routine health assessments. The third rule is to ensure the continuation of your species by engaging in procreative activities.

So I’m not sure I follow. What makes you think he’s in danger?” “Nothing, I guess. The woman’s voice. I don’t know. It sounded so sickly sweet.” “Oh,” Broome said, “well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Megan frowned. “Could you be, I don’t know, a little more patronizing?” “‘Sickly sweet’?” “Okay, I get it.” “No, Cassie or whatever your name is, I don’t think you do.” Broome moved a little closer. “May I be blunt?” “Because so far you’ve been circumspect? Sure.

Stephen and Julia Dignam entered the police station the following morning. Both were in their early fifties but looked older, the sleepless nights and worry taking their toll. Julia linked her husband’s arm through her own and in her other hand she held a ringbinder close to her chest. Written on the spine in faded ink was one word: Megan. The Dignam’s daughter had vanished without a trace twenty years before and every new story of a missing child or unidentified body brought back a new flood of familiar emotions – fear, hope, the possibility of closure after so many years.

the device.

The light is right on their girl.

This was the essence of Floss: not mother of the year, but mother once a year, working remotely, and wanting the same medal.

She looked at him, marveling, as she often did, at his dark, shining eyes, at his jaw upholstered in skin too young for him, too smooth and vital-looking for someone wilting down to nothing. How she would miss the sight of his face when he was finally done disappearing.

I love you so much, Bekah." Why didn't better words exist? Your voice will follow me like a shadow for the rest of my days and I'll never be whole without you and The nights I dream of you will be my happiest. I couldn't let her go.

However long it takes, your heart and your mind will carve out a new life amid this weirdly devastated landscape. Little by little, pain and love will find ways to coexist. It won’t feel wrong or bad to have survived. It will be, simply, a life of your own making: the most beautiful life it can be, given what is yours to live. May this book help you find the thread of love that still exists, following it forward into a life you didn’t ask for, but is here nonetheless.

Trauma separates And there is a shame that follows; one I did not see coming Listeners mean well but they never say the right things ...and it hurts to hear the wrong things. Our world lacks an effective empathetic vocabulary; I hope with my whole heart we can change that.

I thought of all the worry I had solicited in one way or another from Ciaran and from other men, with the food and the cutting and the crying and the sex, the whole great presentation of my rage and hurt, anger like a performance, anger at everything they'd done to me or hadn't bothered doing to me. I thought how full my life and my head had been for ever with these things, with the desperation to be loved by a man, with the idea that a man's adoration or need to fuck me would make all the bad parts of myself be quiet for ever. I'd thought that a man's love would make me so full up I'd never need to drink or eat or cut or do anything at all to my body ever again. I'd thought they'd take it over for me. But now here I was, right inside it, with nobody to say what happened next. What would I think about, now that I wasn't thinking about love or sex? That would be the next thing, trying to figure out what to fill up all that with. But that was all right. That would follow.

Sometimes I thought about people like Lisa - people who never lost control of themselves, who never had too much of anything, who were never awake after one a.m. - with something like disdain. I valued what I thought of as my free nature, my willingness to do whatever I wanted at all times, my ability to be led by whatever base physical urge was singing to me in each moment. Wasn't there some truth to the way I existed that those safer people were too timid to follow in their own lives? It didn't occur to me that maybe Lisa was doing exactly what she wanted to do, that what she wanted was to live in the calm and benevolent way that she did. I didn't think so because it was incomprehensible to me that someone could drink and lack the desire to keep on drinking, I didn't understand that some people didn't have that want inside them.

In fact, I think if Luke hadn’t married me, he might have become a modern-day monastic, a second Saint Herman—a gentle, unflappable man who slept on a bench on a deerskin hide, then moved from Kodiak to the much more isolated Spruce Island, where he pursued a life of solitude but was found by followers because he was good at settling disputes and unafraid of illness, even an epidemic that impacted his closest friends, the native Aleuts. When asked how he could tolerate a life largely alone in the woods, he said, “I am not alone. God is here, as God is everywhere.

redemptive ending, glossing over the darkness and struggle that precedes it.1 We’ve got a cultural narrative that says bad things happen in order to help you grow, and no matter how bleak it seems, the end result is always worth the struggle. You’ll get there, if only you believe. That happy ending is going to be glorious. Grieving people are met with impatience precisely because they are failing the cultural storyline of overcoming adversity. If you don’t “transform,” if you don’t find something beautiful inside this, you’ve failed. And if you don’t do it quickly, following that narrative arc from incident to transformation within our collective attention span, you’re not living the right story. There’s a gag order on telling the truth, in real life and in our fictional accounts. As a culture, we don’t want to hear that there are things that can’t be fixed. As a culture, we don’t want to hear that there is some pain that never gets redeemed.

find something beautiful inside this, you’ve failed. And if you don’t do it quickly, following that narrative arc from incident to transformation within our collective attention span, you’re not living the right story. There’s a gag order on telling the truth, in real life and in our fictional accounts. As a culture, we don’t want to hear that there are things that can’t be fixed. As a culture, we don’t want to hear that there is some pain that never gets redeemed.

You know I’d follow you anywhere. Though I fear we’ll both end up damned.

typical afternoon into Jordan’s worst nightmare. She had followed him for days and knew his every movement. She was in the next booth at Finley’s when Ted took his wife, Amanda, out to dinner. And during the rainstorm last Tuesday, Jordan was right behind the couple and their daughter, Megan, as they stood in line at the grocery store. Staying within earshot helped Jordan plan her revenge. She wouldn’t be happy until every person responsible was checked off her list and dead. She sat in the driver’s seat

That was the thing about being the mouse in the maze, Marlow thought as the flamingos finished trembling, went still. She was the only one surprised by where she ended up.

It’s only history to you because you live out here and aren’t poor.

Search Orla Cadden,” she demanded.

The pages were full of Microsoft gibberish, lorem ipsum and so on.

Floss’s attitude toward Danny, Orla sensed, was one of patient disdain,

I always said we’d have a beautiful wall,

Having a baby is one of the best parts of life' she says. 'But still. It's only one of them.'" - Page 368

. . . though she couldn't admit it directly, not even to herself.

The smile she gave back to him made her feel like she was someone else, someone used to being part of things.

She understood now, in a way that she hadn't in college, that waiting for him was just part of her life. That she would never really stop.

How she would miss the sight of his face when he was finally done disappearing.

She wanted him not to hold her; he couldn't let go just yet.

The thought came out of nowhere and out of everything. It came from being used to finding out, again and again, that something she thought was real was not.

Of course it had been easy to long for him then, when maintaining their personas was their full-time job, when the right quip or band tee or book in common was enough to make them fall for each other. She saw now that she had built her life around a flawed hypothesis.

It came to Orla suddenly, the key that had eluded her all her life. There was only one trick to making a choice, and that was doing it fast

This was how it worked, Orla saw now: being a parent meant that, sometimes, you got to apologize without apologizing, and being a child meant that, sometimes, you got to not apologize at all

She understood now, in a way that she hadn't in college, that waiting for him was just part of her life. That she would never really stop. When people bumped her on the street without seeming to see her at all, she brushed it off with the thought: Someone is waiting to brag that he knows about me.

She figured out, as she cleared the mess from her vision, why she didn't like the gown anymore. It wasn't just that she had seen the color wrong, that the yellow screamed more loudly now than it had when she chose it. It was that she didn't like yellow at all, she realized. She had always thought it was her favorite color, but that was a trick of the pills. It was just that, before she saw everything clearly, it was the brightest thing.

Is that what you think you'll be like? You'll wake up one day and feel like a mother? You never will, just so you know. The baby will come, and you'll wait to feel different. You'll wait for years and years. You'll always think you'll change one day. That you'll wake up and feel... Capable. Capable of protecting this precious little thing. But it never happens. So you keep being scared that you'll fail. And then, one day, you do.

something quite radical for her time and place: that personal choice and individual freedom were innate, and fully consistent with social responsibility and a “Godly” way of life. Following from the discussion she’d had with Channing about Coleridge’s term transcendental, she called her new philosophy “transcendentalism.