And I came to understand, in a way I never had before, that books are truly the stuff of miracles. I even dared to dream that someday, somehow, I might surround myself with books from many times and many tongues...
I tried to speak, to tell Kit I wasn't dead. No sound came out. But I managed to lift one arm a few inches and execute a tiny wave. Hello, still alive. In a fuck ton of pain, but not dead.
I saw the destruction of Dresden. I saw the city before and then came out of an air-raid shelter and saw it afterward, and certainly one response was laughter. God knows, that's the soul seeking some relief.
And Pearl, stepping in, mid-leg deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom, while out of a still lower depth came the gleam of a kind of fragmentary smile, floating to and fro in the agitated water.
I hear hundreds of years of life. I hear wind and rain and fire and beetles. I hear the seasons changing and birds and squirrels. I hear the life of the trees this wood came from.
Was it too much to ask that she find someone who wanted the same things in life as she did--a home, someone to lean on when the not-so-perfect times came crashing down?
Then she squeezed me tighter. Her leg came up and wrapped around me. Then she kissed me too hard and our teeth banged together. I felt like a boa constrictor’s dinner.
The Chinese used gunpowder to make fireworks for celebrations, and the white man came along and said, Holy shit, we can use this to kill people. What better way to celebrate than that?
I was going to make him forget, too. He would forget every woman who came before me, every moment that I wasn’t a part of, every dream he had that didn’t include me. Starting now.
And now—our love is so true, I won’t take a step without you. Thank God, you came. If you love me, please don’t ever let me go.
I came to recognise that, apart from her [Françoise's] own kinsfolk, the sufferings of humanity inspired in her a pity which increased in direct ratio to the distance separating the sufferers from herself.
Twelve thousand miles of it, to the other side of the world. And whether they came home again or not, they would belong neither here, nor there, for they would have lived on two continents and sampled two different ways of life.
Success and failure, ultimately, have little to do with living the gospel. Jesus just stood with the outcasts until they were welcomed or until he was crucified — whichever came first.
After a few minutes, Molly came partway up the short ladder to the bridge and stopped. "Do I need to ask permission to come up there or something?" "Why would you?" I asked. She considered. "It's what they do on ?
Hasn't there always been a moon?" "Bless you. Not in the slightest. I remember the day the moon came. We looked up in the sky--it was all dirty brown and sooty gray here then, not green and blue...
I didn't need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity; I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.
He was taking a leap here, negotiating with a crackhead, under the table, in a dark cantina. The courage etched on his face came from loving Aidia so much he’d close his eyes and walk through fire to see her safe.
I feel like a defective model, like I came off the assembly line flat-out fucked and my parents should have taken me back for repairs before the warranty ran out.
By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.
You can't keep acting like this," Lillian says, and for the first time in months, it's like she's actually trying to be nice. "Tragedy isn't this evil thing that came from outer space. It's just there, you know. Along with everything else.
Merry’s mind devolved into chaos. Ideas evaded her. Words chased one another into meaningless jumbles. Her breath came in shallow gasps as the ghastly image of William’s lifeless body twisting in the wind, solidified and held.
