My mom was a social worker. I had a pretty good idea of what the authorities can do when a parent's not around. Leigh Newman More Quotes by Leigh Newman More Quotes From Leigh Newman Resisting and avoiding pain sucks energy-and time. The more you let yourself feel those minute-and-a-half hells, the quicker you'll start feeling those minute-and-a-half happinesses. Leigh Newman pain energy feelings The most reliable path to glory is base brute effort. Leigh Newman effort glory path While you can't keep your heart from getting broken, you can stop breaking your own heart...once you realize the difference between what you can control and what you can't, and that it's far, far more fun to lavish all that attention on your own self-worth. Leigh Newman self-worth heart fun If you want to write in a mature and interesting way, you have to have sympathy for everyone that's involved. Leigh Newman mature writing interesting Most dreams are also part reality (otherwise we wouldn’t believe them), and reality happens to be a condition that gives you plenty of chances through your life to rise to - no, soar through - the occasion. Leigh Newman dream believe reality There are still things out there in the universe to contemplate and spend our lives chasing. Leigh Newman contemplating chasing stills How do you stop longing for what you absolutely know you can't get? Which really means: How do you absolutely know you can't-and won't-get it, not ever? How do you pinch out that wisp of feeble, ruthless hope? Leigh Newman wisps longing mean I didn't write the memoir with any sort of intention of feeling better. I wrote the memoir because I had a weird need to write a good story. But once I was done, I did feel better about myself. Not better, just calmer. Because a tremendous onus had been lifted off my day-to-day. Leigh Newman feel-better feelings writing Penning an advice column for the literary website The Rumpus, [Strayed] worked anonymously, using the pen name Sugar, replying to letters from readings suffering everything from loveless marriages to abusive, drug-addicted brothers to disfiguring illnesses. The result: intimate, in-depth essays that not only took the letter writer's life into account but also Strayed's. Collected in a book, they make for riveting, emotionally charged reading (translation: be prepared to bawl) that leaves you significantly wiser for the experience. . . . Moving. . . . compassionate. Leigh Newman brother book moving I've managed to create intimacy with people I know, and people that I don't know. The longer things stay inside of us, the more we think they are black or tainted, but they're really not. Leigh Newman black people thinking The reason I could fit in with so many different kinds of people was that I had no self. And then the problem is, if you don't have a self, how can you be with other people? Who the hell are you with them? Leigh Newman different self people I turned what was a wonderful case of self-reliance into a case of self-exile. Which is not uncommon, I think, in people who grow really early and have to learn how to take care of themselves. They have trouble hinging their lives with anybody else. Leigh Newman self people thinking I'm pretty much of the Shakespearean school. Dialogue is character. How we speak is who we are. Leigh Newman who-we-are character school I was an only child. And it's very much my temperament. I remember playing with a piece of string in my room for hours. I had never thought about what it would be like to have siblings. Leigh Newman only-child sibling children I don't think many kids question their surroundings. Everything seems so permanent and inevitable growing up, even chaos. Leigh Newman growing-up kids thinking After my parents divorced, my father remarried and my brothers were born when I was twelve and sixteen. I was thunderstruck at these kids. The "baby-ness" of them. Their toes. I had never been around babies before. Leigh Newman brother baby father Often, I think that my brothers were the reason I didn't do something really stupid in my teenage years; I didn't want to disappoint them. Even though was I was pretty committed to disappointing everybody else. Leigh Newman teenage brother stupid Even as my family fell apart and things were at their most hopeless, my dad and I found a lot of happiness in the wilderness - sleeping on the cold gravel and killing as many things as we could get our hands on. Even as my mom got progressively more crazy, we found a happiness, in flashes. Leigh Newman dad crazy mom There was always some germ of joy, some little paramecium of happiness wriggling around, waiting for a chance to get out. Leigh Newman waiting littles joy The tough thing is how to cultivate a life where the paramecium of happiness gets a lot of chances to get out and swim and make more paramecia. That seems like an obvious universal goal for most humans. Leigh Newman chance goal swim
