For Ragamuffins, God's name is Mercy. We see our darkness as a prized possession because it drives us into the heart of God. Without mercy our darkness would plunge us into despair - for some, self-destruction. Time alone with God reveals the unfatho...
Irwin was difficult to wake; the poor man was totally wiped out. He collapsed in one of the soft office chairs the moment Smith let him, sliding back into slumber. After he was settled, I sat at my desk and reviewed Smith’s…no, Charles’s notes,...
And except on a certain kind of winter evening—six-thirty in the Seventies, say, already dark and bitter with a wind off the river, when I would be walking very fast toward a bus and would look in the bright windows of brownstones and see cooks wor...
One thing this night taught her beyond all doubt - all males were lunkheads, all of them. She recognized that protect the poor helpless girl and don’t worry her little wee head tone. “I’m not stupid. I’m not going to run into a situation I ha...
Look, girls know when they’re cute,” he said. “You don’t have to tell them. All they need to do is look in the mirror. I have one friend out in New York, an attorney. She moved out there after the school year to take the bar. She doesn’t ha...
For centuries, as pope and emperor tore each other apart in their quarrels over power, the excluded went on living on the fringe, like lepers, of whom true lepers are only the illustration ordained by God to make us understand this wondrous parable, ...
Mallory dropped her head to the steering wheel. "Look, I'm mad at you, okay? This isn't about me. I know my painful memories are relative. My life is good. I'm lucky. This isn't about how poor little Mallory has had it so hard. I'm not falling apart ...
Poor Christopher-John had fallen into the hands of Miss. Daisy Crocker. I greatly sympathized him, but as in everything else, Christopher John tried to see the bright side in having to face such a shrew every morning. "Maybe she done changed," he sai...
The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his . He will claim that the state is obligated to protected and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus a...
You know, if you ain't poor, you might think it's the folks in them big ole fine brick churches that's doin all the carin and the prayin. I wish you coulda seen all them little circles a'homeless folks with their heads bowed and their eyes closed, wh...
I’ve got to get my body back. While I like wearing you, I’d rather wear you as a blanket on top of me and not the skin I’m walking around in. It has this whole Hannibal Lecter aspect that’s really creeping me out.”Jo “Hannibal Lecter?” ...
We realize we can't go around saying and doing what we're actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would be a lunatic asylum. Indeed, that's how you know you're talking to a lunatic. Lunatics are those poor souls who have lost their in...
Our behavior is different. How often have you seen a headline like this?--TWO DIE ATTEMPTING RESCUE OF DROWNING CHILD. If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody g...
If you've treated your girlfriend without respect, taken advantage of her, or cheated on her, your actions have taught her that she has no value. Needless to say, this is a serious, serious injury. If you don't try to make it right, she might start t...
He’s like a hero come back from the war, a poor maimed bastard living out the reality of his dreams. Wherever he sits himself the chair collapses; whatever door he enters the room is empty: whatever he puts in his mouth leaves a bad taste. Everythi...
Just like that. Gone forever. They will not grow old together. They will never live on a beach by the sea, their hair turned white, dancing in a living room to Billie Holiday or Nat Cole. They will not enter a New York club at midnight and show the p...
No," I said. "I choose the prophecy. It will be about me." "Why are you saying that?" she cried. "You want to be responsible for the whole world?" It was the last thing I wanted, but I didn't say that. I knew I had to step up and claim it. "I can't l...
Recent evidence confirms that retail prices of essential consumer goods in poor countries are not appreciably lower than in the United States or Western Europe. In fact, with deregulation and "free trade", the cost of living in many Third World citie...
Alexander Smollett, master; David Livesey, ship's doctor; Abraham Gray, carpenter's mate; John Trelawney, owner; John Hunter and Richard Joyce, owner's servants, landsmen--being all that is left faithful of the ship's company--with stores for ten day...
I can't tell you how sorry I am. About everything. About your poor cat, about that horrendous funeral my dad concocted, and really about my lunatic father in general. I'm sorry you had to move in next to a family of complete weirdos. I don't know how...
If we talk about the living oracles and want to pay respect to them, how shall we do this? Shall we do it by never reading their words-by paying not attention to that which they say? That is a very poor way of doing. We ought to listen to their words...
