The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach, because who can bring peace unless they’ve held their own peace?
I was so tired of fighting. Tired of hurting. Tired of the guilt that never released me, and the regrets that could not be changed. I didn't want this life. They're were only so many times I could hear that I should never have been born, before I wis...
Writing had always helped her, before. It always clarified her feelings and her thoughts, and she never felt like she could understand something fully until the very minute that she'd written about it, as if each story was one she told herself and he...
What kind of wedding would you like?" he asked, and stole another kiss before she could reply. "The kind that turns you into my husband." She touched the firm line of his mouth with her fingers. "What kind would you like?" He smiled ruefully. "A fast...
With all due respect," Christopher muttered, "this conversation is leading nowhere. At least one of you should point out that Beatrix deserves a better man." "That's what I said about my wife," Leo remarked. "Which is why I married her before she cou...
The act was an exorcism of relief for Florentino Ariza, for when he put the violin back into its case and walked down the dead streets without looking back, he no longer felt that he was leaving the next morning but that he had gone away many years b...
Maybe this was what Aunt Peg meant all along - returning was a weird thing. You can never visit the same place twice. Each time, it's a different story. By the very act of coming back, you wipe our what came before.
I thought, too, about time. How fleet it is, and how certain, and like death how indifferent to our commentary upon it. Once not long before we had been boys and girls, and soon we would be middle-aged, thickening with rueful pleasure toward the thin...
Time is not your friend. It doesn't care if you live fast or die slow, if you are or if you aren't. It was here before you arrived and it will go on after you leave. Time doesn't care who wins or who loses, if your life span is full or empty, honorab...
Jill and I have known each other our whole lives. One house separates our houses but we act as if it doesn't exist. We met before we were born and we'll probably still know each other after we die. At least, that's the way we're planning it.
I've never looked forward before. I've always looked back. I think about the past way too much and I think about what I should have done and everything I did wrong and I've never once looked forward in my life.
Reaching for the basket of sex accoutrements, she took a thin, red tube, squeezed some clear gel onto her fingertips and returned to fondle his balls. “What’s that?” he asked, feeling a warm, tingling sensation around his genitals. “You not t...
If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person?
I admired how she knew, well before I did, that the point of a child is not what you hope he will accomplish in your name but the pleasure that he will bring you, whatever form it comes in, even if it is a form that is barely recognizable as pleasure...
When I go to the bathrooms, I cannot take off my pants as before; because there is a light continuously blinking like a camera, everyone says it is just an environmental friendly lighting. Well, I cannot really trust it and I am not taking the risk o...
The snow came up to the top of Georgie's calves - she had to lift her feet high to make any progress. Her ears and eyelids were freezing...God, she'd never even been able to imagine this much cold before. How could people live someplace that so obvio...
Nico di Angelo came into Olympus to a hero's welcome, his father right behind him, despite the fact that Hades was only supposed to visit Olympus in winter solstice. The God of the dead looked stunned when his relatives clapped him on the back. I dou...
....though modern Marriage is a tremendous laboratory, its members are often utterly without preparation for the partnership function. How much agony and remorse and failure could have been avoided if there had been at least some rudimentary learning...
It was one of those situations I often find myself in while traveling. Something's said by a stranger I've been randomly thrown into contact with, and I want to say, "Listen. I'm with you on most of this, but before we continue, I need to know who yo...
Life is only a brief stop on the road to eternity. Our loved ones, acquaintances, and strangers pass away before our very eyes on a daily basis. Yet each of us carries on with our lives as if we will live forever. This is merely an illusion; of cours...
...if He made us, He must know He is to blame when He has made us weak or evil. And He must understand why we have been so made, and when we throw ourselves into the dust before Him, and pray for help and pardon, surely--surely He will lend an ear!
