Home > Work > The Midnights
1 " Though outsiders always assumed Southern California is perpetually soft and subtropical with the perfect beach breeze, that sweet lick of sunshine, I knew the truth. The real Southern California exists in extremes. It's a place of spontaneous wildfires, and Santa Ana winds, and droughts that turn lakes into craters, splintering the earth like pottery that has crazed. It's a place of storms that transform streets into oceans, and I had no doubts now: the rain was coming. "
― Sarah Nicole Smetana , The Midnights
2 " It struck me then that this was how most things end: seemingly slow and then all at once. As the last trace of him slipped like sand through my fingers, all I could do was smile bleakly, drink my water, and watch him go. "
3 " I didn't seem to know anyone as well as I thought I did. But I wonder now if maybe you can't ever truly know another person. Maybe all you can do is hope that one day, you'll know yourself. "
4 " And the pain doesn't get easier. It may lose its priority in your life, but it will always be a big fucking crater right in the center of you. The best you can do is try to keep it from swallowing you whole. "
5 " Right now? I asked.He nodded. "When else is there? "
6 " I had spent so much time floundering beneath the weight of regret, thinking that if I had done something differently, he might still be alive. But I suppose all of us are doomed to think this way. We are, after all, the stars of our own stories. "
7 " Closing my eyes, I pushed from my head whatever faults I thought I'd heard in myself, because if my father has taught me anything, it was that the whole of a song was always greater than the sum of its parts. "
8 " Every day, I lost a little bit more of him, and I was afraid that he would slip away until nothing remained but an old photo and a faint longing, a half smile as I struggled to remember some thing he once taught me on a midnight long ago. I had to find a way to hold on to him. I had to find a way to hold on to myself. "
9 " My father's voice may have grown quieter, as Lynn said it would, but I can see now that he actually left me something after all. He left me these little plucks of wisdom that spring forth when I need them most, and his perfectionist's insistence on finding the perfect tone for every song. He left me the twitch, that sudden jolt of my muscles when I see someone else on a stage, or when I realize my hands have been idle for too long. And he left me the yearning I get in the deepest fold of midnight when the rest of the world is sleeping, when the dark is too quiet or the air is too still, and something begins to strum in my gut.So maybe he didn't fail. Maybe neither of us did. "
