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Quote by Caroline George

“Humanity knows not to take big things for granted. We understand the importance of loved ones, health, acceptance, but what about the billion other elements that define who we are? Big we see. For big, we toss and turn at night, fearing big loss. And yet, the little things we overlook. Forgetting to savour life’s details, such as the taste of fresh scones or the scent of books opened for the first time, is our greatest deprivation. Such pleasures are not subject to change. However, we change. Our hearts break, and pastries lose their flavour. Love dies, and our senses dull. By losing a big thing, we lose all the littles by default.”

Quote by Caroline George

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Dearest Josephine

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Caroline George

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“I realized that my jaws were locked, teeth clenched, my eyes wide, and from the light-headedness, I imagined I must look frightfully pale. And I was holding my breath, resisting life so I could resist change from happening. I had so much fear in me. Fear that in this change my home would disappear. I had grown up under the memory of my brother's stories of home, and in the twelve years that had passed without him, I realized that I had been waiting, that I had never truly left Heuksan Island. The home Brother had told me about, I had dreamed of arriving there one day. A home where there was no more sorrow or tears, no more deaths or farewells. A place of togetherness. But now this place would change into a haunted mansion full of strangers and ghosts. How could I embrace them? What did family mean when family had gone away and returned, scarred to the point of being unrecognizable? How could you embrace a stranger with haunted eyes that looked right through you?”

“All my anxiety is separation anxiety. I want to believe you are here with me, But the bed is bigger and the trash Overflows. Someone righteous should Take out my garbage. I am so many odd And enviable things. Righteous is not One of them. I’d rather a man to avoid Than a man to imagine in a realm Unseen, though even the doctor who Shut your eyes swears you’re somewhere As close as breath. Mine, not yours. You don’t have breath. You got Heaven. That’s supposed to be my Haven. I want you to tell me it sparkles There. I want you to tell me anything Again and again while I turn you over To quiet you or to wake and remind you I can’t be expected to clean up after a man.”

“Failure is not the opposite of success but a steppingstone that leads to success. Failures mean you are trying. Failures mean you are learning. Failures mean you are putting in the efforts required to achieve the ultimate goal of success. Failures teach us, prepare us, and steer us toward whatever we set our sights on. Failures happen all the time. You have to keep trudging through them to get where you want to go.”

“And when I looked away for a second and then looked back, I saw her reflection behind me, in the mirror. I was speechless. Somehow I knew I wasn't allowed to turn around--it was against the rules, whatever the rules of the place were--we could see each other, our eyes could meet in the mirror, and she was just as glad to see me as I was to see her. She was herself. An embodied presence. There was psychic reality to her, there was depth and information. She was between me and whatever place she had stepped from, what landscape beyond. And it was all about the moment when our eyes touched in the glass, surprise and amusement, her beautiful blue eyes with the dark rings around the irises, pale blue eyes with a lot of light in them: hello! Fondness, intelligence, sadness, humor. There was motion and stillness, stillness and modulation, and all the charge and magic of a great painting. Ten seconds, eternity. It was all a circle back to her. You could grasp it in an instant, you could live in it forever: she existed only in the mirror, inside the space of the frame, and through she wasn't alive, not exactly, she wasn't dead either because she wasn't yet born, and yet never not born--as somehow, oddly, neither was I. And I knew that she could tell me anything I wanted to know (life, death, past, future) even though it was already there, in her smile, the answer to all questions, the before-Christmas smile of someone with a secret too wonderful to let slip, just yet: well, you'll just have to wait and see, won't you? But just as she was about to speak--drawing an affectionate exasperated breath I knew very well, the sound of which I can hear even now--I woke up.”