Feeling the Pam Houston Tonight

Just needed to get lost in my favorite female author for awhile. Thought I'd share some of the quotes that spoke to me. (I've posted some of these long ago here.)

"I wanted her to see that the only life worth living is a life full of love; that loss is always part of the equation; that love and loss conjoined are the best opportunity we get to live fully, to be our strongest, our most compassionate, our most graceful selves. "

"Life gives us what we need when we need it; receiving what it gives us is a whole other thing."

"The more important question, of course, was what the new Lucy would do, and even though I was pretty sure the old Lucy wouldn't be around much anymore, I was a little bit afraid the new Lucy hadn't yet shown up."

"The Universe has a plan to make sure we don't ever stop learning, not only in our minds, but also in our hearts."

"She's felt so bad for so long she don't know good when it's bubbling right out of her. And even when she catches up to it, she's waiting for whatever bad thing is about to happen next."

"If I had a daughter, I would tell her what a funny thing love is, how it never looks the way you think it's going to, how no matter how old you get, it is love that keeps surprising you. How in the songs sometimes it involves beaches and champagne and chocolate-covered roses, but in real life it is just a prematurely balding man standing in a drought-dried field telling you that he loves you, and that you should do whatever on earth you want."

"She wasted so much time trying to act perfectly, trying to guard against the loss, always fearful of making the mistake that would lead to it."

"I thought about all the years I'd spent saying love and freedom were mutually exclusive and living my life as though they were exactly the same thing."

"In every assumption is contained the possibility of its opposite."

"You wonder why there's no word for the opposite of lonely. You wonder if there's a difference between whatever might be truth and a performance that isn't a lie. In your life right now, you can't find one."