Rules for Visiting
Jessica Francis Kane
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Because certain things only come into focus when a person is gone. It’s sad but true. You need memory and loss to polish your thoughts.”
“Perhaps a best friend is someone who... holds the story of your life in mind. Sometimes in music a melodic line is so beautiful the notes feel inevitable; you can anticipate the next note through the long rest. Maybe that is friendship. A best friend holds your story in mind so notes don't have to be repeated.”
“It seems to me that your oldest friends can offer a glimpse of who you were from a time before you had a sense of yourself.”
“Neighbor seems to me a flexible word. You can say "She's my neighbor." and people will think you mean she's your friend. But if something goes wrong, you can say, "Oh I don't really know her. She's just my neighbor," and everyone still knows what you mean.”
“People feel sorry for the housebound, but it can be a position of strength, a refusal to meet the world on its terms... The recluse decides when and to whom she will speak, access is limited.”
“How can we live in a time when social media makes us friends with people all over the world, but our sense of neighbor is shrinking?”
“But you're sure we're not being slothful?" I told her avarice, envy, pride, lust, and wrath harm others, and gluttony is bad for your health. But sloth is just a willingness to move slower than others and that's not a crime. I've always thought despair should be the seventh deadly sin instead.”
“When a friend is suffering, it seems you have three options: You can sit silently with her, you can make suggestions, or you can share heartache from your own life. None of the three is as simple as it sounds. I knew someone in college who was so full of advice it was exhausting to share problems with her. You left with a small treatise of self-improvement ideas and the urge to lie down.”
“Midway through my fortieth year, I reached a point where the balance of the past and all it contained seemed to outweigh the future, my mind so full of things said and not said, done and undone, I no longer understood how to move forward. I was tipped backward and wobbly, my balance was off, and this made sense to me. A life seemed so long, I couldn't see how anyone proceeded under the accumulated weight of it.”
“Love stands apart; love lets you come to it.”
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Book Keywords:
self, aging, friendship, future, past
