I’m fine, Mom. Thanks for asking.” ... “Of course you’re fine.” She keeps walking. “You’re the devil’s bride and these are his creatures.” ... “I’m not the devil’s bride.” “He carried you out of the fire and is letting you...
So if existence was just binary, dead or alive, here or not here, what would be the fucking point in anything? My mom used to say that's why we have memory. And the opposite of memory--hope. So things that are gone can still matter. So we can build o...
The more we become able to become a child again, to keep ourselves childlike, the more we can understand that because we love the world and we are open to understanding, to comprehension, that when we kill the child in us, we are no longer.
The art of writing is not as solitary as one might think. When it finally dawns on us one day that our task as writers is to share what we know of the human spirit, we suddenly discover that we were never truly alone.
I'm convinced that fear is at the root of most bad writing. If one is writing for one's own pleasure, that fear may be mild — timidity is the word I've used here. If, however, one is working under deadline — a school paper, a newspaper article, t...
Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do― to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross ...
I daresay it seems foolish; perhaps all our earthly trials will appear foolish to us after a while; perhaps they seem so now to angels. But we are ourselves, you know, and this is now, not some time to come, a long, long way off. And we are not angel...
We should always be grateful for the faults in our partner because if they didn't have those faults from the start, they would have been able to marry someone much better than us
To my mind the defining characteristic of our era is spin, everything tailored to vanishing point by market research, brands and bands manufactured to precise specifications; we are so used to things transmuting into whatever we would like them to be...
I understand the loss of a comrade is something to mourn, but our responsibilities do not end because one has lost the fight. We as defenders of this nation have an obligation to those who've sworn allegiance to us. And I intend to uphold my oath to ...
And even though I adore the fact that Francesca has Ben's eyes, I also see now that her biological connection to us is irrelevant. She is her own little person. She is Francesca. If we weren't her "natural" parents, we would still have loved her just...
We are not going to reduce energy capture unless catastrophe forces us to—which means that the only way to avoid running out of resources, poisoning the planet, or both, will be by tapping into renewable, clean power.
He treats the person as if they were fully whole. We become what others expect us to be. Dad expected me to get better and even assumed I would have something helpful to say. Funny how we rise and fall to the assumptions of others.
The public library contains multitudes. And each person who visits contains multitudes as well. Each of us is a library of thoughts, memories, experiences, and odors. We adapt to one another to produce the human condition.
There Bomar is, wherever he is, spending a fortune every day on liquor and beautiful women and expensive playthings, when he could find peace of mind right here with us, for a mere twenty cents. --"Bomar
There's and entire world outside these bleak pages, one full of SUNRISES and KITTY-CATS and late-night BURRITO RUNS and the horrible, creaking amble of us all towards DEATH. It is to that world that I am afraid I must release you to now.
She leaned down so she was looking right in my eyes. "You hear me, child. you can't use other folks' bad behavior to excuse your own. When we got a choice, we keep Jesus in our hearts and don't do nothing that would make him ashamed.
At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament ar...
It's supposed to go bing-bing or bong-bong or ding-ding when tires go over it. The one at Dave's stopped working several years ago, and he won't have it fixed because he feels as I do - that none of us need to be reminded we exist.
It's all—let's use a very specific word here—miraculous. You, me, love, quarks, sex, chocolate, the speed of light—it's all miraculous, and it always has been.
Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse ...
