“Maybe home is just all that we leave behind.” 🌟

👋 Hello readers!👋

Over in the Facebook group, we're sharing some of our favorite quotes from Rough Magic — an easy task, if you ask me. My personal favorite? "I hadn't noticed until now that part of me preferred to travel slowly and catastrophically. Nor had I realized this preference would be at odds with participating in a race."

Here are some of the other highlights, along with the readers who loved them:

"Anger wears down the body, as a mountain wears down a horse." (Morgan Benson)

"A man aboard a horse is often a funny sight for me, and a man on a pony takes leave of comedy and enters the absurd. Ponies are strong enough to nimbly unseat even the muscliest of riders. It's a quiet threat that seems to unscrew manhood with every stride." (Olivia Nixon-Hemelt)

"Maybe this is proof that certain aspects of our characters sit in a freezer somewhere, always ready to defrost." (Erin Summerhays)

"Maybe home is just all that we leave behind." (Erin Summerhays)

Speaking of quotes — I've been thinking about one that touches on Lara's conflicting views about ambition. Regarding her competitor Devan's overt ambition, she writes, "I used to love winning as much as she does, but it was always accompanied by shame...Somewhere along the line I seem to have learned that overt ambition is distasteful."

What is about ambition — and not only ambition, but the unapologetic display of ambition — that can feel shameful, and where do we learn that shame? Why can it be so hard to admit you want something and you'll stop at next to nothing to get it? How do you feel about the connection Lara makes between shame and ambition?

Join the conversation and share your thoughts!

Happy reading,

Arianna

🤔 Got a question for Lara Prior-Palmer? 🤔

Next week Lara will be answering reader questions on our Instagram. Have something you're dying to know about Rough Magic, her writing process, future projects, or anything else? Reply to this newsletter or drop a question in the Facebook thread, and yours might be chosen!

💡 Points of Inspiration 💡

"Rough Magic was written over five years so it has been fun trying to remember my changing habits and inspirations!" Lara told us when we asked about the things that inspired her while writing. Below, a list of those people, places, concepts, and experiences that helped along the way.

Train stations, moving places: I liked to sit down and write in places where people were strained and in motion, high-wiring from A to B with no compulsion to pause — maybe so I could re-see myself in the race, caught between desires to motor and desires to let go.

Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje: What absurd brilliance his sentences are.

Food: The color of carrots, and other miracles, such as apples in winter.

Crying

My terrible singing voice when the silence of the laptop got to me.

Three Worlds: Music From Woolf Works by Max Richter — music from the ballet based on three of Virginia Woolf's novels.

Anywhere outside, the sky — or, if inside, traveling to my memory of the steppe.

Running — or any sport, walking included.

Animals and their relationship to truth.

Want to catch up on past BuzzFeed Book Club reads? Pick up The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh, Sugar Run by Mesha Maren, My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, or Family Trust by Kathy Wang. 📖