We as humans are the patterns of life. We are the roads we travel. Our lives make up the insignificance of a moment of the importance of a second. The choices we make are everything. I realize that, now that everything has changed and I'm a different person.
On the best nights, he’d appear outside the bookstore window and wait for me to unlock the door. He usually hadn’t had time to shower between doing things with cattle and horses and coming to find me, and he looked older than us and stronger than us.
I thought back to Meg’s advice about Hemingway sentences—simple declarative statements that showed the truth and distilled the meaning. My first attempt at that had been cynical and messed up. I gave it a go again.Find one lost sheep.The angels rejoice.
I finally understood why so much monkey business happened in the backs of buses. Put us in close proximity, with wheels spinning under us, and nothing to do but wait, we’re going to start thinking of lovely uses for our bodies. I don’t care who you are.
I was so tired of this ceaseless, day-to-day tug-of-war between my hormones and my head, my vanity and my virtue. I felt very much as though I were caught in the middle of some dreadful battle in which taking a side of my own would mean certain misery in either case.
Thanet is having a moment,” I said, leaning forward so Quinn could see him.“What’s wrong, man?” Quinn said. “Were you not aware high school dances suck? That they always have sucked and they will continue sucking as long as the world turns?
I’m not going anywhere until you hear me out.”Oh, please no. Anything except having to listen to her lecture. I push the button that calls the nurse.“Can we help you, Alex?” a voice bellows through the speaker.“I’m bein’ tortured.
He is a free man, not because is in a poition of political power and influence that you will never be able to achieve, and not because he has more character and heart in his fingertip than you have in your entire being, but because he is a man, and is thus entitled to be free.
Listen, I don’t know what the hell happened between you and Marco. To be honest I don’t really want to know, ’cause if I did I’d probably want to kick the shit outta him.”“I don’t need you to protect me.”“What if I want to?
Maybe I’m stupid. Maybe I’m just as evil as he is by keeping my mouth shut. But he told me once that I was different. And I can’t help but hope that me being different is the one thing in this world that can save him from what he fears the most…Himself.
Dorian sat quietly for a moment and then said, “We all straddle the abyss, Penny. If you never look down, how will you ever know who you are or what you will become? Your dad could never be ashamed of you, because falling in that abyss is part of the process of growing up.
Shimmel: “NEVER TRUST THE GOYIM. They are just like these other weird dangerous people, Messianic Jews! How dare Jews become “Christian-like”, Messianic? We should cherem (ban) them from every aspect of Jewish life. And we must strip them of every Jewish privilege!
The voice blurs and fades, like a faint cry riding on the tails of the wind. I yawn and stretch, rolling over. I fold my pillow under my head and wait for the voice to return. When I hear nothing but the sound of my own breathing I allow myself to drift back into a dreamless slumber.
If I stay. If I live. It’s up to me.All this business about medically induced comas is just doctor talk. It’s not up to the doctors. It’s not up to the absentee angels. It’s not even up to God who, if He exists, is nowhere around right now. It’s up to me.
But I understood, now, that we don’t live only for ourselves. We’re connected by millions of shared experiences and dreams and nightmares, all tied together with compassion. I learned that even when we’re going through our darkest winter, spring is waiting to appear.
