Even the vendors sitting on stools around the periphery work steadily at connection, nodding at potential buyers, like a sewing machine prodding its needle into the cloth.
Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of its past
Because what would be left, when all these books were in the past? He lay awake nights dreading it.
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
A journalist's job is to collect information, Ovid said to Pete. Nope, Pete said. That's what we do. It's not what they do. Dellarobia was unready to be pushed out of the conversation just like that....
People love to read about sins and errors, but not their own.
Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.
What is new is that we now know so very much about the world, or at least the part of it that is most picturesquely exploding on any given day, that we're left with a desperate sense that all of it is...
Well, the ancients might not have been very heroic. Most of them were probably like Mother, crouched somewhere trying to work out how to make fake jawbone jewelry that would look like the real thing.
The human person cannot face up to a bad outcome, that's just the deal.
Tall and straight I may appear, but I will always be Ada inside. A crooked little person trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes
Something like that is as bad or as good as a telephone ringing in the night: either way, you’re not as alone as you think.
Our holiday food splurge was a small crate of tangerines, which we found ridiculously thrilling after an eight-month abstinence from citrus.... Lily hugged each one to her chest before undressing it a...
Mother, you can still hold hold on but forgive, forgive and give for long as long as we both shall live, I forgive you, Mother.
Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet
I remembered my pep talk to Esperanza a few months before, and understood just how ridiculous it was. There is no point in treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, Ther...
How can we presume to uplift the life of the working man, if we don't respect his work?
He warned Mother not to flout God's Will by expecting too much of us. Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes,' he still loves to say, as often as possible. 'It's hard to say whi...
Father had not spoken up yet. My theory was he didn’t know who to jump on first, the insulting Underdowns or his cussing wife, so he just stood there brewing like a coffeepot.
Daddy and I got married kind of accidentally.