Quotes from Joy Castro

Perhaps it is impossible for people who don't have younger siblings - or, to be more precise, people never charged in childhood with complete responsibility for their younger siblings - to imagine the huge and tender hollow that such caretaking carves out in a child.

I didn't want to go inside, to nod at condolences, to taste that mixture of casseroles and grief.

It's a hard fact, Daughter, but pretend love feels better than no love at all.

The legacy from my mother is eighteen things, and the last is the capacity to look at life fresh, to not give up. To tell the truth about our fuckups and our wounds. To let it hurt. To change, to let go, to start over - the willingness to keep starting over, for as long as we have and as long as it takes.

It's all right that there are things that you do not get over, not really. You just go on, knowing that the things you love could be stripped from you at any moment, remembering to love them now. It makes you human. You try to be decent and treat people gently, knowing that they, too, have their scars and madness that, like yours, do not show.

clear rubber gas mask

people never charged in childhood with complete responsibility for their younger siblings—to imagine the huge and tender hollow that such caretaking carves out in a child.

Rich people fetishize even what they eschew, the food they cannot eat: it makes them special. Here in Chicago, having people over for dinner is a logistical feat. Some of our friends are gluten-free by choice, while others decline all refined sugar on principle; some are vegan and some merely ovo-lacto vegetarian; some won't consume palm oil because of the rainforests and tiger habitats. Some are on that paleo diet, while others are merely lactose intolerant. It takes a spreadsheet.