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Quote by Josa Young

“Sarah had no intention of having nannies or anything like that. Her mother had sighed a bit, and said vaguely: ‘I always find women who look after their own children get rather untidy and disorganised. Husbands hate it too'. Sometimes Sarah wanted to slap her face.”

Quote by Josa Young

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Sail Upon the Land

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Josa Young

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“...we are taught to put fun and serious pursuits on a continuum as opposed extremes, when this dichotomy is entirely false, made even worse when we act as though we can instantly exchange one for the other...Exerting yourself at a task that is serious and rewarding can still be quite fun, but doing something fun because you have a neurotic need to pack your life full of un is pretty much a guarantee that any long-term benefits you derive will be entirely happenstance.”

“Xanthi came into my childhood in August of 1954, arriving at Union Station near the Chicago River, final stop in a transatlantic journey to help take care of me and my siblings in suburban Oak Park while Mom underwent treatment, such as it was in those days, for breast cancer metastases. Xanthi was a friend of my maternal grandmother’s, maybe even a distant relative. Didn’t matter to me as a four-year-old boy. Whoever she was related to, she left her home on the Peloponnesus to live with us for room and board and some money to send back home after a string of cataclysms bludgeoning Greece at the time.”

“Xanthi had passed through Union Station’s vast Beaux Arts atrium, the Great Hall, magnificent and scary to me as a kid...There she stood in black garments, individual, resilient. Her green eyes anomalous to the Peloponnesus, more common among mountain Greeks. She was like that one blade of grass my dad’s lawnmower couldn’t cut, no matter how many times he went over it. Almost no gray hairs glinted among her dark ones tucked back into a tiny bun. She stepped toward us, pulling out of a movie, away from the first decades of a century pockmarked by war, famine, earthquakes, and a Great Depression denting the hubris of Union Station, colossal behind her.”

“The difference between superlative pie and a wish for cake is crust. Understand that pie is a generous but self-centered substance. It likes attention, not affection. Do not hug your crust. Do not rub its back or five its high. Don't fuss with refrigerators every step oft he way. Keep the water and butter cold, and remember what a wise baker once said: The goal is pie.”

“Sabrina Thomas clutched the leather-bound notebook to her chest and tried not to be impatient as the elevator in the south tower of Texas Hospital near downtown Dallas stopped once again on its climb to the eighteenth and top floor. But it was difficult. Dr. Cade Mathis, the bane of her existence, would reach Mrs. Ward’s room first and then there’d be hell to pay. Sabrina jabbed the button to close the doors as soon as the last person stepped onto the already crowded elevator.”