Ramona Ausubel

“For heartsickness of the unending variety, befriend a dove. Do not catch it, not even so that you can set it free. Just get down on the ground with bread crumbs on your chest and wait for it to find you interesting.”

“A person who wants to believe lives in a world full of proof.”

“It doesn't always make sense, how you go about loving someone. Sometimes loving means gathering them back, sometimes it means sending them away.”

“The only true thing is what's in front of you right now.”

“Time was a dazzling lie, a magician worth a bird in his hat. The truth, I felt certain, was that everything happened at once. How old was I? I was every age at the same time. All the days of our lives were today.”

“You are like a shell,” he said. “A seashell. Hollow but beautiful.”“Hollow.” She nodded. For the rest of the day, they sat not far from each other, gazing out the window at the light shifting almost imperceptibly. They sat about and let themselves be objects on which dust might settle, air might past, light could play.“I am just an emptiness,” she said.“No,” he told her. “You are a resting place.”

“Help, I said. “Is this real? Am I still me?”The Stranger comforted, “Everything stays true. You are yourself, no matter how much you have to change.”But what had I done? I couldn’t remember; I must have made each required movement…I must have passed instinctively through the motions that somehow changed me from girl to woman. Although if there was such a transformation, I had not witnessed it.”

“You know that smell, when you put your nose up to a pine tree?" I told her I did perfectly. "No matter how long it has been, you always will. Like you are storing a part of that tree in your own body. ... Everything stays true. You are yourself, no matter how much you have to change.”