The things that matter in life

A quote from The Secret Life of Bees, my book club book, that I finished last night:

The main character, Lily, asks the woman she’s staying with why her house is bright pink, who explains that she did it because her (simple-minded) sister wanted her to.

“How come if your favorite color is blue, you painted your house so pink?”

“You know, some things don’t matter much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of things? But lifting a person’s heart – now, that matters.

The whole problem with people is […] they know what matters, but they don’t choose it. You know how hard that is, Lily? I love [my sister] May, but it was still so hard to choose Caribbean Pink. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.”

(Still waiting for thesis revisions...)