So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and ...
Leaning against my car after changing the oil, I hold my black hands out and stare into them as if they were the faces of my children looking at the winter moon and thinking of the snow that will erase everything before they wake. In the garage, my w...
Most days I live awed by the world we have still, rather than mourning the worlds we have lost. The bandit mask of a cedar waxwing on a bare branch a few feet away; the clear bright sun of a frozen winter noon; the rise of Orion in the eastern evenin...
Jesus must have had man hands. He was a carpenter, the Bible tells us. I know a few carpenters, and they have great hands, all muscled and worn, with nicks and callused pads from working wood together with hardware and sheer willpower. In my mind, Je...
What is it you do, then? I'll tell you: You leave out whatever doesn't suit you. As the author himself has done before you. Just as you leave things out of your dreams and fantasies. By leaving things out, we bring beauty and excitement into the worl...
And we're not alone, you know, children," came Mrs. Whatsit, the comforter. "All through the universe, it's being fought, all through the cosmos, and my, but it's a grand and exciting battle. I know it's hard for you to understand about size, how the...
[last lines] Death: I have seen a great many things. I have attended all the world's worst disasters, and worked for the greatest of villains. And I've seen the greatest wonders. But it's still like I said it was: no one lives forever. Death: When I ...
Government advocate: General Dyer, is it correct that you ordered your troops to fire at the thickest part of the crowd? Gen. Dyer: [righteous tone] That is so. Government advocate: One thousand five hundred and sixteen casualties with one thousand s...
Mind Your Language in the Presence of Patriachs Q. When is rape not rape? A. When it is your father or stepfather.
To exist is to stand out, away from the background," The Preacher said. "You aren't thinking or really existing unless you're willing to risk even your own sanity in the judgment of your existence.
God's got a lot of explaining to do. Of course, God never explains. When life breaks your heart, you're just supposed to pick up the pieces and start all over, I guess.
What we sometimes see as annoying, incessant questions from a child may be a plea for recognition. Maybe they do not need an answer as much as attention.
The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally.
... the worst possible heritage to leave with children: high spiritual pretensions and low performance.
Children aren't everything. There are other things in the world, thought I admit some people don't seem to suspect it.
They had perfected their team nagging to a level where they no longer had to confer and felt they would be wasting their talents if they only admonished their own children.
Before you and your spouse can work as a team raising your children, you must first work as a team in your marriage.
Our children belong to God. We're only given them on loan from heaven. Sometimes God calls them home sooner tan we expected.
Children seem to need, then, a delicate balance between the realistic and the fantastic in their art; enough of the realistic to know that the story matters, enough of the fantastic to make what matters wonderful
It wasn't for children, seventh grade. You could read the stress of even entering the building in the postures of the teachers, the security guards. Nobody could relax in such a racial and hormonal disaster area.
Only the family, society's smallest unit, can change and yet maintain enough continuity to rear children who will not be "strangers in a strange land," who will be rooted firmly enough to grow and adapt.
