When service is unto people, the bones can grow weary, the frustration deep. Because, agrees Dorothy Sayers, "whenever man is made the center of things, he becomes the storm-center of trouble. The moment you think of serving people, you begin to have...
Lola writes in her notebook: Leaf-fleas are even worse. Someone said, They don't bite people, because people don't have leaves. Lola writes, When the sun is beating down, they bite everything, even the wind. And we all have leaves. Leaves fall off wh...
It is so beautiful to be loved as Laurie loves me; he isn’t sentimental, doesn’t say much about it, but I see and feel it in all he says and does, and it makes me so happy and so humble that I don’t seem to be the same girl I was. I never knew ...
Hermes smiled. "I knew a boy once ... oh, younger than you by far. A mere baby, really." , George said. Martha snapped. Hermes ignored them. "One night, when this boy's mother wasn't watching, he sneaked out of their cave and stole some cattle that b...
you're Shane, right?' He inched away from her and managed a quick nod as he twisted the rag he held in his fingers. 'Heidi sad you were willing to teach me how to ride.' Her expression shifted from entertained to confused, as if she was wondering why...
It was told to me, it was in a manner forced on me by the very person herself whose prior engagement ruined all my prospects, and told me, as I thought, with triumph. This person's suspicions, therefore, I have had to oppose by endeavouring to appear...
The survivor movements were also challenging the notion of a dysfunctional family as the cause and culture of abuse, rather than being one of the many places where abuse nested. This notion, which in the 1990s and early 1980s was the dominant underst...
You know, Junie, you're fourteen now. I think you can certainly manage to put together a sandwich. ... The thing is, if my mother had any idea what I had in my backpack, she would have made me that sandwich. If she knew that I'd searched and searched...
And when she at last came out, her eyes were dry. Her parents stared up from their silent breakfast at her. They both started to rise but she put a hand out, stopped them. ‘I can care for myself, please,’ and she set about getting some food. They...
In the past I had often tried to escape the grown-up world of sorrow through my imagination- dreaming that a handsome young lieutenant would ride to my rescue or that a great empresario would discover my musical talents and whisk me away. I had envis...
I shook my head, smiling in spite of myself, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Adrian. My husband. If anyone had told me a year ago that I'd be married, I would've said they were joking. If they'd told me I'd be married to a vampire, I would've said ...
Growing up in Fitzgerald, I lived in an intense microcosm, where your neighbor knows what you're going to do even before you do, where you can recognize a family gene pool by the lift of an eyebrow, or the length of a neck, or a way of walking. What ...
You have any complaints or comments, you direct them to me. If you call and harass Granddad again, I'll do whatever I can, legally, to revoke that trust fund you've been living off of for the last thirty years." "You have no right to—" "No, you hav...
She remembers blood. A fine mist which goes deep into her lungs, over her skin and through the air. She remembers a desert at dusk. The sky indigo blue and the fire bright, so bright that she can see everything. Near the fire, in the night, all she k...
She dared to cry? On this day of all days? I was the one who would be married at sunset, and I hadn't let myself cry in five years. There was ice in my lungs and in my heart. I was floating. I was swept away, and out of the cold I spoke to her in a v...
Far rather would she that he were dead! She could not sit beside him when he stared so and did not see her and made everything terrible; sky and tree, children playing, dragging carts, blowing whistles, falling down; all were terrible. And he would n...
15. WHENEVER I WENT OUT TO PLAY, MY MOTHER WANTED TO KNOW EXACTLY WHERE I WAS GOING TO BE When I'd come in, she'd call me into her bedroom, take me in her arms, and cover me with kisses. She'd stroke my hair and say, 'I love you so much,' and when I ...
We have the greatest power through love that can be known. It overcomes everything with its fierce and steady truth, if you can continue to stand in it. You can call love to you, directly from the original stream of consciousness, anytime you feel we...
Mother is a humble woman. Very, very humble. She toils at a small café one hour distance from our home. She presents food and drink to customers there, and says to me, "I mount the autobus for an hour to work all day doing things I hate. You want to...
Emmeline Finch: I'm only thinking of Russell's condition. Mrs. Marcus: You mean his financial condition, because that's the only condition that he has. J. Russell Finch: Yeah but... Mrs. Marcus: Emmeline, do you know why your husband had a nervous br...
Uncle Ed: What's this I hear from Stephanie about you becoming a policeman? Billy Costigan: You mean Stephanie, who was the only one who came to my father's funeral? That Stephanie? Uncle Ed: Yeah, *that* Stepanie. Billy Costigan: Nothing much to it,...