I used to want to understand how the world worked. Little things, like heavy stuff goes at the bottom of the laundry bag, or big things, like the best way to get a boy to chase you is to ignore him, or medium things, like if you cut an onion under ru...
Did you catch the time-of-great-suffering thing?” Her expression softened. “Can you just make sure I’m not around when it happens?” “No can do,” I said, strolling back to my office with a negating wave of my hand. “If I have to suffer, ...
Could you bring me to Rita’s house before we go to the airport?” I ask. “There’s one last thing I need to ask her to do.” “That is on the other side of the river,” says Ethan.“I know. But I need to see her. Please, I’ll be eternally...
I know it’s hard when other children are called home but we can find purpose and good in all things when we can see things from the Lord’s perspective. There is goodness to be found and lives are still touched and changed for the good when little...
It's such a hopeful, almost utopian word, that word "phase." As if any minute, "we" would suffer some sort of Joad overload, come to "our" senses, and for heaven's sake, do something about our godforsaken shoes. But the book phase never ended. The bo...
I squinted at the western sky behind Thaddeus, a blood-red smear melting into blackness. Twisting my neck, I glanced the opposite direction. My teeth clenched at a magnified, round moon nearly as scarlet as the portending sunset, its luminous face ha...
There is another life both for you and for me,’ said I. ‘If it be the will of God that we should sow in tears now, it is only that we may reap in joy hereafter. It is His will that we should not injure others by the gratification of our own earth...
- Do you want to know why I followed you into that funeral parlor? - You said you followed me on a whim. - That´s the truth, but there´s more to it. I was parking at the gas station across the street and I saw you get out of your car. I didn´t thi...
While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top,spreading his laugh across the water. Laughing at the girl,at the guys, at George,at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier and the bicycle rider...
I don't think I can give you an answer. Oh, I could give you Freudian reasons with fancy talk, and that would be right as far as it went. But what you want are the reasons for the reasons, and I'm not able to give you those. Not for the others, anywa...
Alex leaned over and treated me to a Rhett Butler kiss, slow and deep but not too sweet. He once told Scarlett something to the effect of how badly she needed kissing, and by someone who knew what he was doing. Alex knew what he was doing. By the tim...
Strong passions are the precious raw material of sanctity. Individuals that have carried their sinning to extremes should not despair or say, “I am too great a sinner to change,” or “God would not want me.” God will take anyone who is willing...
At the beginning of the war…I had to look in on the War Office, and in a room I found a fellow…What do you think he was doing…what the hell do you think he was doing? He was devising the ceremonial for the disbanding of a Kitchener battalion. Y...
No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring. Comforter, where, where is your comforting? Mary, mother of us, where is your relief? My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief- w...
Our great mistake in education is, as it seems to me, the worship of book-learning–the confusion of instruction and education. . The children in our elementary schools are wearied by the mechanical act of writing, and the interminable intricacies o...
How hard it is, to be forced to the conclusion that people should be, nine tenths of the time, left alone! - When there is that in me that longs for absolute commitment. One of the poem-ideas I had was that one could respect only the people who knew ...
Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for a moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed: tha...
I held a brief debate with myself as to whether I should change my ordinary attire for something smarter. At last I concluded it would be a waste of labour. "Doubtless," though I, "she is some stiff old maid ; for though the daughter of Madame Reuter...
As a kid, I was taught that if you opened the Bible in the middle you'd probably land on the book of Psalms. And near the middle is everyone's favorite, the 23rd, there is this line: "You prepare a table before in the presence of my enemies." I don't...
"How do I break thee? Let me count the ways. I break thee if thou art at any height My paw can reach, when, smarting from some slight, I sulk, or have one of my crazy days. I break thee with an accidental graze Or twitch of tail, if I should take a f...
