For the only time in my life I would be living with a chain-smoking semi-invalid whose chief point of pride in life was his membership in the Ku Klux Clan.
Everybody is somebobdy and I chanllenge anybody to deny it.
Are you tired, Mary? I asked. She raised her weary gaze to me. My socks are tired, she said. And my shoes won’t even walk. To this day whenever in our family we want to express complete exhaustion, we...
Soldiers on the banks of the canal, they looked carefully to see whether they were Japanese or Chinese so they’d know which pass to pull out.
You never know ahead of time what something is really going to be like.
You gotta know someone cares about you, or you just give up.
We're alike, Jess would tell himself, me and Miss Edmunds . . . We don't belong at Lark Creek, Julia and me.
We need a place, she said, just for us. It would be so secret that we would never tell anyone in the whole world about it. ... She lowered her voice almost to a whisper. It might be a whole secret cou...
That was the rule that you never mixed up troubles at home with life at school. When parents were poor or ignorant or mean, or even just didn't believe in having a TV set, it was up to their kids to p...
Jess followed, still trying to figure out why two grown people and a smart girl like Leslie wanted to leave a comfortable life in the suburbs for a place like this. They watched the bus roar off.
I was quite sure I was crazy, and it was amazing that as soon as I admitted it, I became quite calm. There was nothing I could do about it. I seemed relatively harmless. After
Cows...weren't like people, with feelings of lonesomeness and worrying about what might happen next. That was just people, wasn't it? Sure, you could scare a cow, but wouldn't they get over it as soon...
I just gave up trying to be a Christian... Let's face it, I ain't got the knack for holiness. Besides, I didn't have the slightest little desire to join the likes of Reverend Pelham at the dinner tabl...
We need a place, she said, just for us. It would be so secret that we would never tell anyone in the whole world about it.
Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits.
Someday, when he was good enough, he would ask her to write them in a book and let him do all the pictures.
Once there, the chaplain closed the door and threw his arms around her. Alarmed, she jammed the heel of her pump into his foot. He let go with a howl and she fled. The incident was never spoken of aga...
My father loved peanuts and bought quantities of them to take along, only to find to his chagrin that peanuts were one of China’s leading exports. They also went to Chinatown, feeling that since they...
If life is so bad, how come you’re so happy? Did I say bad? I said it was tough. Nothing to make you happy like doing good on a tough job, now is there?
He nodded vigorously. Anything was better than promising to fight Janice Avery.