Jesus Christ, you’re soaking wet. Seriously, have you been going around with all this between your legs? I can feel it through fucking flannel, honey. Oh my God, I can feel it through ,” he said, the first words almost steady and sure and the las...
Where did the bonds of maternity end? All children grew up, changed, became somebody else. Parents who trembled that they might lose a gap-toothed toddler to some terrible accident ended up losing him anyway, always, to time. The toddlers died, after...
It [being very rich] used to worry me, and I thought it wrong to have so many beautiful things when others had nothing. Now I realize that it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor. The poor have always been the favour...
It's always been difficult for me to speak and express my innermost thoughts. I prefer to write. When I sit down and write, words grow very docile, they come and feed out of my hand like little birds, and I can do almost what I want with them; wherea...
He grinned. "Well, girlfriend seems to be too shallow a word for what I feel for you. These past two weeks it's been as if you control my breathing. When I watched you with Marcus, my chest would tighten, and it became hard to breathe. But then I wou...
She clutched the train ticket tighter and waited for the sense of escape to come over her as it had a dozen times before, that heady sensation of having just scooted through the clanging gate, of eluding the thrown net. It didn't come. She was runnin...
I want to mother the world, I thought. I have so much love. Then—I have no business being a mother. I am a selfish woman. Then—I can do this. Millions of women have been mothers. Then—I feel very alone. I do not know what I'm capable of.
We are at the tail end of a decline in infant mortality that began just over a century ago. Babies no longer wander into open hearths or are mauled by marauding pigs. We have vaccines, lead-free educational toys, diapers that can sop up a typhoon. Bu...
I've been in auditions without screens, and I can assure you that I was prejudiced. I began to listen with my eyes, and there is no way that your eyes don't affect your judgement. The only true way to listen is with your ears and your heart. (p.251)
Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding of the underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we came fr...
(Rude Scrabble) You played this game with your parents?" he asked skeptically. Yep. And Mom always won, the dirty bitch. I guess being older she'd been around more than me and Carrie," Sophie said, extracting replacement tiles from the box. "Although...
I don't think my mum ever understood my love of Doctor Who. Surely her strongest memory would have been me, standing at the top of the stairs, crying about how the "jelly men" were going to get me? Sorry, Mum, for those sleepless nights, but it was w...
Millions of people have been lifted from poverty and have gained access to modern education and health care. We have a universal declaration of human rights, and awareness of the importance of such rights has grown tremendously. As a result, the idea...
It seemed I'd always been chasing after something, anything that moved -a car, a bird, a blowing leaf -anything that might lead me into some more lit place, some unknown land downriver. I had not even the vaguest notion of the broken world I was livi...
. . . in no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption, and delusion, for the support of depredation and oppression in...
Can you not see death as the friend and deliverer? It means stripping off that body which is tormenting you. What are you afraid of? Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave it with regret?
Olivia was moody. wasn't a word with which she was very familiar, but if it meant that her moods swung back and forth for no reason at all, and that she felt crabby and wanted to be alone more often than she felt content and friendly, and that she wa...
The past had already been dealt with, to one end or another, it was certain, fixed, the horror of it was already over. For the living at least. They grieved, yes, but they were not trapped in the terror of the moment. Not so for my poor, elegant wrai...
Sophie said to me once that she was glad she had been scarred. She said that whoever loved her now would love her true self, and not her pretty face. This is your true self, Tessa. This power is who you are. Whoever loves you now--and you must also l...
For me, personally, life in South Africa had come to an end. I had been lucky in some of the whites I had met. Meeting them had made a straight 'all-blacks-are-good, all-whites-are-bad' attitude impossible. But I had reached a point where the gesture...
My mom's always been a good cook, so I took a lot of stuff from her, but most of the stuff I took from Emeril or Bobby Flay right off the TV and make it. I just loved to cook, so it just became a thing. It's a release. Even if I'm alone, I'll cook a ...
