If your reading life and your friendships overlap, that's just a nice coincidence - a case where the conversation you're having with books and the conversation you're having with actual human beings happen to dovetail.
Kevin BrockmeierA successful song comes to sing itself inside the listener. It is cellular and seismic, a wave coalescing in the mind and in the flesh. There is a message outside and a message inside, and those messages are the same, like the pat and thud of two heartbeats, one within you, one surrounding. The message of the lullaby is that itโs okay to dim the eyes for a time, to lose sight of yourself as you sleep and as you grow: if you drift, it says, youโll drift ashore: if you fall, you will fall into place.
Kevin BrockmeierShe had the same responsibility as everybody else did: to live as softly as she could in the world.
Kevin BrockmeierDreaming was easier than screaming, and screaming was easier than worrying, and worrying was easier than crying, which was what she knew she would be reduced to if she didnโt keep a hard eye on herself.
Kevin BrockmeierIn seventh grade I gradually became aware that that quickness of feeling was something I was supposed to have outgrown. I was rather guileless, I think, or at least I was when it came to the people I cared about.
Kevin BrockmeierAnyone who has ever experienced love knows that you can have too much or too little. You can have love that parches, love that defeats. You can have love measured out in the wrong proportions. It's like your sunlight and water - the wrong kind of love is just as likely to stifle hope as it is to nourish it.
Kevin Brockmeier