KATE BOLICK’S TALKS

‘Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?’ – MARY OLIVER

out.

‘Capturing someone’s

‘When you choose a life partner, you’re choosing a lot of things, including your parenting partner...your eating companion for about 20,000 meals, your travel companion for about 100 vacations...and

I read myself sober, and I read myself happily single. When you learn about something, and learn new ways of thinking about it, you are literally changing your brain and laying down new neural pathways, just as you do when you learn a new language. In the next few chapters, I’m going to share everything useful I learned in my year’s sabbatical.

Why is learning loopy? It’s just neuroscience. It’s your brain trying to go down well-trodden pathways, the routes of least resistance.

DOUBLE-MESSAGING Their/my phone is not ‘playing up’. They got my message. They have not forgotten how to read. They don’t need a ‘nudge’. If they don’t reply, they can jog on. Rejection is the universe’s protection.

‘Then, when we find we can’t change the ending, and that we still can’t transform the withholding into adoration, we’ll try to change them.’ They poke parts of us that are already bruised, and arguments are a result.