Even if the stars are obliterated by light there are beautiful things to see all around us, and we can't be bothered. But its not because we are ill, most of us. Or because it's too cold. Or because w...
Connelly writes, As long as there is paper, people will write, secretly, in small rooms, in the hidden chambers of their minds, just as people whisper the words they’re forbidden to speak aloud. In
But missing people and being lonely, she pointed out, are two separate things.
But it's one thing to feel that a book can speak beyond its particular time and place to something universal, and another to ignore the circumstances and time in or about which it was written.
But I do want you to look after each other. I’ll be very cross if I hear that any of you are fighting. And if anyone causes trouble, I’ll come back from the grave and get ’em.
As we were talking, a social worker came in with a questionnaire. Did Mary (I thought it was odd that they always called her Mary even though her name was Mary Anne, and odder that Mom refused to corr...
Also, how could anyone who loves books not love a book that is itself so in love with books?
2. People who promise things that they never give are like clouds and wind that bring no rain: do not be misled by promises. 3. Your vote is your power: use it to make a difference to your life and yo...
1. You have nothing to fear. Remember that your vote is secret. Only you and your God know how you vote. 2.
In the eyes of her oldest friends and colleagues and extended family, she wasn't a painfully thin seventy-five-year-old gray haired woman dying of cancer- she was a grade school class president, the y...
They would soon be old enough to read The Railway Children by Edith Nesbit and Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, and eventually Iris Murdoch and Alan Bennett. They could all be readers, and mayb...
Remarked to Mom how all the books we were reading then shared not just length but a certain theme: fate and the effects of the choices people make. I think most good books share that theme, Mom said.
Remains for my family the perfect model of how you can be gone but ever present in the lives of people who loved you, in the same way that your favorite books stay with you for your entire life, no ma...
Universal health care was always an issue Mom cared about, and the more care she got, the angrier she became that good medicine wasn’t available for everyone in the United States. The pharmacy almost...
It’s cruelty that gets to me. Still, it’s important to read about cruelty.Why is it important? Because when you read about it, it’s easier to recognize. That was always the hardest thing in the refuge...
I asked Mom why she thought that was, and she pointed out that joy is a product not of whether characters live or die but of what they’ve realized and achieved, or how they are remembered.
How can you be lonely, Mom said, when there are always people who want to share their stories with you, to tell you about their lives and families and dreams and plans?
Connectivity is one thing; connectivity is another. . . . Constant connectivity can be a curse, encouraging the lesser angels of our nature. None of the nine Muses of classical times bore the names I...
Books speak to us thoughtfully, one at a time. They demand our attention. And they demand that we briefly put aside our own beliefs and prejudices and listen to someone else's. There's one questions I...
Books had always been a way for my mother and me to introduce and explore topics that concerned us but made us uneasy, and they had also always given us something to talk about when we were stressed o...