For women especially, virginity has become the easy answer- the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as you've never had sex, you're a "good" (i.e. "moral) girl and therefore worthy of praise.
but my dad said it was no excuse. "But I love him!" I had never seen my sister cry that much. "No, you don't." "I hate you!" "No, you don't." My dad can be very calm sometimes. "He's my whole world." "Don't ever say that about anyone again. Not even ...
The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too good for them. They may fail in emergencies; but life is not one long emerg...
If you criticize others’ ideas, they will almost never use yours no matter how good they are.
The universe will never 'take away' something that is for our highest and greatest good so when we 'lose' something, or our lives shift, it is always for our benefit. It’s unwrapping a surprise present from the universe.
We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and that sense of fear, of furtive unrest, struggling at length to blind unreasoning panic - now m...
Are you really going to work in that?" Maura asked. Blue looked at her clothing. It involved a few thin layering shirts, including one she had altered using a method called shredding. "What's wrong with it?" Maura shrugged. "Nothing. I always wanted ...
Believe me, once you have tasted worship—the kind of worship that captures your heart and rivets your full attention on the living Lord—nothing less satisfies. Nothing else even comes close. Once you have tasted true worship, you will never want ...
in a constitutionally ordered state, where laws are derived from broad principles of right and wrong and where those principles are enshrined and protected by agreed upon procedures and practices, it can never be in the long-term interest of the stat...
Maybe it was this place, this strange, ramshackle, warm-hearted place, that had given his wife that air of laughing, welcoming life. Because here she bloomed. With him she had faded and he had faded with her. Yet here she was, his Jane again. His hop...
She had never been so affected by the idea of intimacy, but there was something about his eyes; something warm, and gentle even though she felt transparent every time he turned his attention on her; like he could see her, really see her. The idea of ...
I'd left them because I'd loved them. Beth and my parents and my friends and my life-my free, American life. I loved them, and if I had a chance to protect them from the people who wanted to destroy them then I had to take that chance even if it mean...
I would think it odd, he said, that he had never married. I did not, in fact, think it at all odd--the statistical chances against any woman being prepared to endure both the hairiness of his legs and the tedium of his conversation seemed to be negli...
I always figured we were born to fly, one way or other, so I couldn't stand most men shuffling along with all the iron of the earth in their blood. I never met a man who weighed less than nine hundred pounds.
My childhood was one of both poverty and plenty, suffering and joy. I was taken out of poverty, both financial and emotional, and lavished with love. I was given a gift I could never repay if I lived a thousand lifetimes, it was the gift of hope and ...
It is time someone put in a good word for the petite bourgeoise. Unlike the working class and capitalists, who have never lack for spokespersons, the petite bourgeoise rarely, if ever, speaks for itself.
Words were the bane of her existence. She drowned in them when all she wanted was silence, only to have them recede when one desperately-sought phrase would be the key to her salvation. Most things were like that: excess in times of abundance, and sh...
Night is irregular. What is not done in the daytime becomes possible at night: murder and sex and thought. Simple men are driven to early beds by tomorrow's daytime demands and by fear of the dark, and never dream of the irregular world outside. And ...
A third reason scientists are reluctant to examine paranormal phenomena is that they appear to contradict known physical laws. What is the point of studying the impossible? Only a fool would waste his time. The problem of data in conflict with existi...
Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in hims...
I wanted to make her a greeting card, but as far as I got was folding the paper in half. I left it blank inside, so she’d know how much I love her. I never mailed it, because my tongue was too dry to lick the envelope closed, and my cat was too bus...
