I shouldn't be surprised. Catholicism is the ultimate loophole religion (sin, confess, repeat), so it makes sense that a priest would know better than anyone how to work the angles. Still, when you go to confession and say, "Forgive me, Father, for I...
Straight people don't have to come out, as heterosexuality is assumed. [...] Young straight people are less likely to question the choices that their families and societies are attempting to make for them. [...]A lot of straight people move through l...
Jutta whispers, “A girl got kicked out of the swimming hole today. Inge Hachmann. They said they wouldn’t let us swim with a half-breed. Unsanitary. A half-breed, Werner. Aren’t we half-breeds too? Aren’t we half our mother, half our father?
Hon tror hela tiden att det är han som kommer där och att han har ångrat sig. En vän ringer och ursäktar. Inte så mycket å hans egna vägnar som å kärlekens. Att det är så det är; utan rättvisa. Rättvisa har inget med kärlek att göra,...
The moonlight shines and billows; the broken clouds scud above the trees. Leaves fly everywhere. But the moonlight stays unmoved by the wind, passing through clouds, through air, in what seems to Werner like impossibly slow imperturbable rays. They h...
There comes a point at which you stop giving things up. That is what i won't give up. None of it will i give up, for my beautiful sister Ivy who lies in bed. Ivy who used to be alive. Ivy who used to be. Ivy who used. Ivy who. Ivy-who-is-not-me. Not ...
The world should have stopped, but it didn't. The world kept on going. How can the world just keep on going? An earthquake in India kills a thousand people, and the world keeps on going. A famine in China kills a million people, and the world keeps o...
I had seen the light, come to believe that a wedding should be about a feeling between two people, not a show for the masses...It was a magical, romantic evening, and although I occasionally wish I had worn a slightly fancier dress, and that Nick and...
I nod, thinking of how difficult marriage can be, how much effort is required to sustain a feeling between two people - a feeling that you can't imagine will ever fade in the beginning when everything comes so easily. I think of how each person in a ...
We tell stories to talk out the trouble in our lives, trouble otherwise so often so unspeakable. It is one of our main ways of making our lives sensible. Trying to live without stories can make us crazy. They help us recognize what we believe to be m...
Whenever I hear of someone else's tragedy, I do not dwell on the accident or diagnosis, or even the initial shock waves or aftermath of grief. Instead, I find myself reconstructing those final ordinary moments. Moments that make up our lives. Moments...
[T]he ways in which the information we give off about our selves, in photos and e-mails and MySpace pages and all the rest of it, has dramatically increased our social visibility and made it easier for us to find each other but also to be scrutinized...
[B]ecause the minimum costs of being an organization in the first place are relatively high, certain activities may have some value but not enough to make them worth pursuing in any organized way. New social tools are altering this equation by loweri...
Through being fired I was given the perfect circumstances to finally answer my calling and live my dream, and I remain grateful to this day for that television network firing me. Without them, I would have refused the call to follow my dream, and I w...
No one will ever understand like I do. You’re so different with me, baby. You take care of me. You make me feel safe. You’re not who you think you are. Didn’t you once tell me that people aren’t just one thing? You’re so much more to me tha...
As I said, it comes with a price.” His grin was wicked and I suddenly felt a little breathless. “I’m a hard man to please. And I’m also a very busy man. You’ll do what I want when I want and I won’t always be nice about it. In fact, consi...
If an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say in a pleasant and hopeful voice, "Well this isn't too bad, I don't have a left arm anymore but at least nobody will ever ask me if I'm left-handed or right-handed," but most of ...
Parenthood wasn’t about blood or biology, he found; it was about a joyful willingness to give yourself over, to subordinate your own needs for someone else’s. When you loved your kids, you’d give up everything to keep them safe and make them ha...
Why did she give up wine for Lent? Polly was more sensible. She had given up strawberry jam. Cecilia had never seen Polly show more than a passing interest in strawberry jam, although now, of course, she was always catching her standing at the open f...
nostalgia, underlying cosmological explanation for Weak but detectable interaction between two neighboring universes that are otherwise not causally connected. Manifests itself in humans as a feeling of missing a place one has never been, a place ver...
There is beautiful you are." "No," said Marged, between a sigh and a sob. "Yes," said Owen. "No," said Marged, not so certain. "Behold," Owen said, from Solomon. "thou art fair. Thou hast dove's eyes." "Dove's eyes are small." Marged said. "Yours are...
