It struck her how eating was a comfort during a hard time because it reminded you that there had been other days, good days, when you’d eaten the same thing. Reminded you there were good days in life, when precious little else did. (268)
Interpretation
This quote highlights how eating can serve as a source of comfort during difficult times by recalling happier moments.
In this quote, Ron Rash emphasizes the emotional connection between food and memory. During hard times, the act of eating can evoke memories of better days, reminding a person of past joys and providing solace in the present. It highlights the importance of simple pleasures, like sharing a meal, in bringing comfort and reminding us of life’s brighter moments.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a wellness seminar focused on finding comfort in everyday activities.
She realized that being starved for words was the same as being starved for food, because both left a hollow place inside you, a place you needed filled to make it through another day. Rachel remembered how growing up she’d thought living on a farm with just a father was as lonely as you could be. (130)
The woman doesn't look up. It's as if she's deaf. Maybe she is. Maybe she's like the Cambodian women I've read about, the ones who witnessed so many atrocities that they have willed themselves blind. Maybe that's what you have to do sometimes to survive. You kill off part of yourself, your hearing or eyesight, your capacity for hope.
Short fiction is the medium I love the most, because it requires that I bring everything I've learned about poetry - the concision, the ability to say something as vividly as possible - but also the ability to create a narrative that, though lacking a novel's length, satisfies the reader.
The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.
What you’re believing in the moment creates your suffering or your happiness.
For everything bad, there's a million really exciting things, whether it's someone puts out a really great book, there's a new movie, there's a new detective, the sky is unbelievably golden, or you have the best cup of coffee you ever had in your life.
I just love life. I love people. I love to write, that's my gift. I love to sing. I have a good attitude. I like to think I shine from the inside.
All human history attests That happiness for man, - the hungry sinner! - Since Eve ate apples, much depends on dinner. ~Lord Byron, Don Juan, Canto XIII, stanza 99
That man lives happy and in command of himself, who from day to day can say I have lived. Whether clouds obscure, or the sun illumines the following day, that which is past is beyond recall.
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