I propose that every person out of work be required to submit a book report before he or she gets his or her welfare check.
I can see myself now, she said. And I can see what I want to be, ten years from now. But I don't understand how I'm going to get from here to there.
If she had some level of theism, we might have a shared theological root from which I could shape holy words.
But his eyes say what he can’t. I see it, clear as day, even if she doesn’t. He’d give up his wings for her. All she’d have to do is ask.
Twas hard to dislike a man she so enjoyed in bed. Twas harder still to dislike one who kept showing her a more gentle side to his nature
Everything in Tom's cathedral looked as if it was meant to be. Perhaps her life was like that, everything foreordained in a grand design, and she was like a foolish builder who wanted a waterfall in the chancel.
I found out pretty quickly that there is a lot of money to be made if you can become the kind of woman who doesn’t look like the kind of woman she is.
She has changed in this way that motherhood changes you, so that you forget you ever had time for small things like despising the color pink.
She stole my first kiss, first love and all those first things, which are remembered just because they’ve never been before
And of course there was no help for it, except recalling bits of conversations she had overheard from time to time about marriage. That’s what knitting groups and sewing groups were for, wasn’t it? Commiserating about marriage.
He didn't mind if she hated him. They were never going to be a cute romantic couple like Sam and Astrid. Clean-cut, righteous, all that. The perfect couple. He and Diana were the imperfect couple.
Had Elizabeth's opinion been all drawn from her own family, she could not have formed a very pleasing picture of conjugal felicity or domestic comfort.
But the years came and went without bringing the careless boy; and when they met again Wendy was a married woman, and Peter was no more to her than a little dust in the box in which she had kept her toys.
It still hurts," she whispered. "Even when you're doing it for someone else, that doesn't stop your ribs from getting cracked, or your wrist swelling, or your cuts from bleeding.
We didn't make ourselves," she says. "We aren't the greatest things to exist. I can't believe that. I won't believe that. We have too many faults.
Did he know she could barely think, let alone speak, for awareness of proximity of his fingers? Of course he knew. He was a rake. This is what he did.
she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.
Then, in the spirit of benevolence, "Your face is well balanced." She slapped him encouragingly on the back, "You have very long eyelashes. Like a cow.
Hortense and Berthe nodded, as though profoundly impressed by the wisdom of their mother's pronouncements. She had long since convinced them of the absolute inferiority of men, whose sole function was to marry and to pay.
Reiko had not kept a diary and was now denied the pleasure of assiduously rereading her record of the happiness of the past few months and consigning each page to the fire as she did so. - Death in Midsummer and Other Stories
She wanted him to tell her that when you love someone so hard and so fierce, it was all right to do things that you knew were wrong.
