Sublime

always have the choice to behave well, no matter the circumstance.

Sylvie leaned against the wall. Because she was clear about what she didn’t want, she was alone. She was no longer who she used to be, and she wasn’t yet whoever she was becoming. She was grateful that her father had prepared her for this type of hard, lonely ground. Because of him, Sylvie knew she could exist outside the boundaries of her past and

She knew how to walk in the shadows so she wouldn’t shine in the darkness. No one looked at her twice.

I am fascinated by what it takes to stay awake in difficult times. I marvel at what we all do in times of transition—how we resist, and how we surrender; how we stay stuck, and how we grow. Since my

It was easy to take the library for granted—I’d been going there several times a week for seven years—but my brief absence reminded me how much I loved it (thus proving the advice of happiness experts, who advocate periods of deprivation to sharpen pleasures).

“We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them,” Weil wrote. The person who is good at accompaniment is decelerating the pace of social life.

The journey of life has long and tedious stretches, step by step, day by day, without anything exciting happening, but memory is made up of the unexpected events that mark your course.

To return to the city of one’s birth always felt like retreat.