Devon had been so lonely, so terribly lonely, for so long. The kind of lonely that sears, that burrows its way deep inside a heart and throbs. Like a gnawing hunger.
I never knew before that religion was such a cheerful thing. I always thought it was kind of melancholy, but Mrs. Allan's isn't, and I'd like to be a Christian if I could be one like her.
Every self-respecting act of persuasion must find appeal to curiosity, then to vanity, and lastly to kindness or remorse. Isabella looked down and slowly nodded.
We owe it to the fields that our houses will not be the inferiors of the virgin land they have replaced. We owe it to the worms and the trees that the building we cover them with will stand as promises of the highest and most intelligent kinds of hap...
Hope erodes slowly, over time, until you wake up one night at three o'clock in the morning and realize: I am not meant for that kind of thing.
Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind of people who only ask one to pretend!
You could have just said Ngozi is your tribal name and Ifemelu is your jungle name and throw in one more as your spiritual name. They’ll believe all kinds of shit about Africa.
Alexa, and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness.
He advocated that all who follow Jesus are priests, not just the official clergy. Much of what he said made sense, as did his kind manner. But why was he here now? Had this persecuted recluse emerged just to speak to me?
Every interaction in the marketplace produces some kind of evaluation or appraisal opportunity that can be conveyed to others by the person on the receiving end of the interaction.
Because memory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present. In order to reach any kind of success in automobile racing, a driver must never remember.
For everyone who never smiled in school photos, for all who’ve wandered city streets not knowing the where they were or feeling alone, I’ve packed kindness.
Tools that provide simple ways of creating groups lead to new groups, [...] and not just more groups but more kinds of groups.
They poured out the lower doors and windows of the castle, howling to the skies. They evolved into a kind of cohesive moving liquid, flowing down the hillside as one silvered blob, like mercury on a scientist’s palm.
Nothing helped until the day she took a tablet and pencil into the basement and moved the event out of her and onto paper, where it was reshaped into a kind of simple equation: loss equaled the need to love again, more.
There is more than one kind of freedom," said Aunt Lydia. "Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.
It showed a kind of obscenity you see only in nature, an obscenity so extreme that it dissolves imperceptibly into beauty.
The soul of the newly born baby is marked for life by the pattern of the stars at the moment it comes into the world, unconsciously remembers it, and remains sensitive to the return of configurations of a similar kind.
Coffee, it’s love you can brew and drink. There is an edible kind of love, and if you’re interested, I make it by hand.
I tried to wear my shirt while it was still on the hanger. That’s just the kind of morning person I am with no coffee.
Gretta sits herself down at the table. Robert has arranged everything she needs: a plate, a knife, a bowl with a spoon, a pat of butter, a jar of jam. It is in such small acts of kindness that people know they are loved.
