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1 " Forgiveness without understanding is like faith without proof. "
― Jessica Francis Kane , The Report
2 " Settle. The word gives me pause...I suppose what you are reading is my attempt to settle. There's a story I've been trying to tell, one about friendship and friends and what place they have in life, and one I've been trying not to tell about my family. Does that make me an unreliable narrator? To a certain extent, aren't we all? We don't get to write from scratch the whole story of our lives. We are given certain plot points that must be incorporated. Maybe we settle when we've done the best we can.Is it real? I once asked Amber. What? she said. Your life. The things that happen to you. Is it real or are you just really good at making it all into stories? She said, I don't understand the difference. "
― Jessica Francis Kane , Rules for Visiting
3 " Why do I like gardening? Because I worry I've inherited a certain hopelessness, a potentially fatal lack of interest, that I'm diseased with reserve. Making a garden runs counter to all that. You can't garden without thinking about the future. "
4 " My grandfather...The last thing he said to my mother was "Your mother loves you"...Years later it occurred to me that when someone says what my grandfather did, what they mean, what would be far more accurate, is "She is trying to love you as best she can." This might be okay with you, or it might now be what you need at all...and now I am forty years old...I don't have a daughter and I don't know if I ever will. But if I do, we will not carry this sadness forward. I'm tired of holding it. "
5 " 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. "
6 " 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. "
7 " 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. "
8 " 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? "
9 " 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. "
10 " 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. "
11 " I'm aware not everyone feels the way I do about trees, but I have no idea why not. "
12 " I don't know why people start thank you notes with the word 'just'. Just a quick note to thank you for a wonderful time. Just wanted to say thanks for everything. It reduces expecations right from the start. It says: I understand the importance of saying thank you, but I won't be writing a letter. It says: I'd like to follow the best social conventions, but I won't be spending that much time on it. I've even seen stationery that has "Just a note" printed on the front. If you start there, why write the note at all? Consider the synonyms: merely, barely. Would you write: barely a note to thank you for the visit? Merely a hasty parargaph to acknowledge all you did for me? "
13 " 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. "
14 " 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. "
15 " Did you know people will underestimate the weight of a heavy backpack before climbing a steep hill if they're standing next to a friend?""Aww," Neera said. "That's nice."I looked out the window. Every stripped tire looked like roadkill. After a minute, Neera said, "Actually, that really is something.""I thought so," I said. "
16 " 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. "
17 " Love stands apart; love lets you come to it. "
18 " Is it real? I once asked Amber. What? she said. Your life! The things that happen to you. Is it real or are you just really good at making it all into stories? She said, I don’t understand the difference. "
19 " It seems the trees' plight is to always be underappreciated by humans while working the hardest of any plant on earth for them. We cut them down, we poison them, we introduce disease and destructive pests. But we also plant them when someone is born, we plant them when someone dies. We want them to measure and commemorate our lives, even as the way we live hurts them. "
20 " Allegedly warmth, cheeriness, friendliness and strength are distinct from one another and your likability is largely determined by how much of each you project. The definition of warmth is how easily you convey you have something in common with another person. "
