Joan Didion, A Book of Common Prayer

She was going to stay.

Not “stay” precisely.

“Not leave” is more like it.

“I walked away from places all my life and I’m not going to walk away from here."

“You have to pick the places you don’t walk away from."

[...]

“You don’t get any real points for staying here, Charlotte."

“I can’t seem to tell what you do get the real points for,” Charlotte said. “So I guess I’ll stick around here awhile.”

Madeleine Thien, Simple Recipes, "Dispatch"

In the end, you know that the two of you will pick yourselves up, you will walk home together not because it is expected or even because it is right. But because you are both asking to do this, in your own way, because you have come this far away together.

The on-screen neurotic Woody Allen quipped that eighty percent of success is showing up.

All those times I said that there is credit for just being there, I wasn't lying.

And what do you know, we're still here.