I shrugged. I saw a Star Trek episode one time that was along those lines. All the women on this whole planet end up naked. I can’t remember exactly, but I think Captain Kirk gets turned into a pipe w...
Hunger of the body is altogether different from the shallow, daily hunger of the belly. Those who have known this kind of hunger cannot entirely love, ever again, those who have not.
Having children was not like people said. Forget training them in your footsteps; the minute they put down the teething ring and found the Internet, you were useless as a source of anything but shoes...
Have you heard the songs they sing here in Kilanga? he asked. They’re very worshipful. It’s a grand way to begin a church service, singing a Congolese hymn to the rainfall on the seed yams. It’s quite...
Everyone should get dirt on his hands each day. Doctors, intellectuals. Politicians, most of all. How can we presume to uplift the life of the working man, if we don't respect his work?
A dog can’t think that much about what he’s doing, he just does what feels right.
The truth needs so little rehearsal.
The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.
I used to think religion was just more of the same thing. Dump responsibility on the big guy. Now I see an importance in that. It's a relief to accept that not everything is under your control.
¡Alabado sea el señor de todas las plagas y secretas aflicciones! Si Dios se divirtió inventando los lirios del campo, seguro que se partió de risa con los parásitos de África.
Shambles in her sternum.
How ridiculous it was. There is no point in treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, There now, hang on, you’ll get over it. Sadness is more or less like a head cold—wi...
[from an entry by her daughter Camille] On the other hand, if cattle remain on pasture right to the end, that kind of beef is called grass finished. The difference between this and CAFO beef are not j...
You can’t replace people you love with other people…But you can trust that you’re not going to run out of people to love.
While we watched without comprehension, she moved away to where none of us wanted to follow. Ruth May shrank back through the narrow passage between this brief fabric of light and all the rest of what...
Well, that’s how thick I am, I never knew how to want what everyone wants. I only thought to look for a home, some place to be taken in. Handing over a crumpled heart, seeing it dropped in the wastepa...
We seem to be built with a faulty gauge for moderation.
We newspaper readers all have our pet vexations. Somewhere in one of those sections is the column we anxiously turn to for the sole purpose of disagreeing with the columnist. Volubly.
Want is a thing that unfurls unbidden like fungus, opening large upon itself, stopless, filling the sky. But needs, from one day to the next, are few enough to fit in a bucket, with room enough left t...
There are Christians, and there are Christians.