# The Echo Wife  Author:: Sarah Gailey ## Highlights > It’s clothing as contrition, a performance of beauty I have put on to pay penance to the people gathered to acknowledge me. They are here to see me, and I must apologize for requesting their attention, must make up for the weight of my demand by ensuring that looking at me will be a pleasant thing. Never mind the suffocation of the outfit, never mind the expense, never mind the impracticality. The transaction must be made: my efforts at beauty in exchange for their regard. And so, twice in my life, I have worn the cost of that recognition. ([Location 36](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07WPNG138&location=36)) > I, inside the silk, was the same person I always was, but the gown was a costume that gave me the right to be notable. It justified the evening I was about to face. ([Location 44](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07WPNG138&location=44)) > Stress stimulates growth. Sometimes, in order to make something develop in the right direction, you have to hurt it. ([Location 824](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07WPNG138&location=824)) > The way I see it, you mostly stop loving a person the same way you stop respecting them. It can happen all at once, if something enormous and terrible falls over the two of you. But for the most part, it happens by inches, in a thousand tiny moments of contempt that unravel the image you had of the person you thought you knew. ([Location 1889](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07WPNG138&location=1889)) --- Title: The Echo Wife Author: Sarah Gailey Tags: readwise, books date: 2024-01-30 --- # The Echo Wife  Author:: Sarah Gailey ## AI-Generated Summary None ## Highlights > It’s clothing as contrition, a performance of beauty I have put on to pay penance to the people gathered to acknowledge me. They are here to see me, and I must apologize for requesting their attention, must make up for the weight of my demand by ensuring that looking at me will be a pleasant thing. Never mind the suffocation of the outfit, never mind the expense, never mind the impracticality. The transaction must be made: my efforts at beauty in exchange for their regard. And so, twice in my life, I have worn the cost of that recognition. ([Location 36](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07WPNG138&location=36)) > I, inside the silk, was the same person I always was, but the gown was a costume that gave me the right to be notable. It justified the evening I was about to face. ([Location 44](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07WPNG138&location=44)) > Stress stimulates growth. Sometimes, in order to make something develop in the right direction, you have to hurt it. ([Location 824](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07WPNG138&location=824)) > The way I see it, you mostly stop loving a person the same way you stop respecting them. It can happen all at once, if something enormous and terrible falls over the two of you. But for the most part, it happens by inches, in a thousand tiny moments of contempt that unravel the image you had of the person you thought you knew. ([Location 1889](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07WPNG138&location=1889))