Natalie Audelo

We shrink our dreams in public, as if protecting them from the harsh light of scrutiny. But I've come to believe we're not really protecting our dreams from others' judgment. We're protecting ourselves from the vulnerability of wanting something we might not get.

Morrison’s novels are all motivated by an idea: some complex knotty inquiry that she could work through in the space of a novel. As Morrison described it, the idea for Beloved began when she read a newspaper article about Margaret Garner—a 19th-century woman who fled slavery with her children. Facing capture, Garner killed one of her children and t... See more

We create our own reason to live, not a meaning to life. If life has no meaning, it is entirely up to us to determine how we want to live, what purpose we want to fulfill. As Jean Paul Sartre would put it, we define our existence by determining our own essence, or the things that make us us. It is also up to us to grapple with the terrors that come... See more