Atmosphere

This book made me tear up a few times in public, so I have to give it high marks. It’s not the type of book I’d usually pick, but I loved it from start to end.

Notes & Highlights

Because the world had decided that to be soft was to be weak, even though in Joan’s experience being soft and flexible was always more durable than being hard and brittle. Admitting you were afraid always took more guts than pretending you weren’t. Being willing to make a mistake got you further than never trying. The world had decided that to be fallible was weak. But we are all fallible. The strong ones are the ones who accept it.

“Or better yet, we are the universe. I would go so far as to say that as human beings, we are less of a who and more of a when. We are a moment in time—when all of our cells have come together in this body. But our atoms were many things before, and they will be many things after. The air I’m breathing is the same air your ancestors breathed. Even what is in my body right now—the cells, the air, the bacteria—it’s not only mine. It is a point of connection with every other living thing, made up of the same kinds of particles, ruled by the same physical laws.

Language is what allows us to communicate. But it also limits what we can say, perhaps even how we feel. After all, how can we recognize a sentiment within ourselves that we have no word for? And perhaps, Joan thought, science is the same. Even the way we tell one another we want to live alongside them is limited by what we understand is possible in the world. What more could we say if we knew more about the universe?