When they are pushed down long enough they will rise up. If they bite you, they are trying to fix things in the only way they know.
Most people lived so far from it, they thought you could just choose, carnivore or vegetarian, without knowing that the chemicals on grain and cotton killed far more butterflies and bees and bluebirds and whippoorwills than the mortal cost of a steak or a leather jacket.
I knew exactly what I should have said: Be careful what you give children, for sooner or later you are sure to get it back.
I’m out of the habit. I’ve spent years trying not to want. Just, you know, as an endeavor, like quitting smoking.
It only we could recover faith in a seed – and in all the other complicated marvels that can’t fit in a sound bite. Then we humans might truly know the glory of knowing our place.
Sal Monelli was an unfortunate fellow whose name had struck such terror in her heart she forbade him to touch any food item that wasn’t sealed and crated. Lou Ann’s life was ruled by the fear of salmonella, to the extent that she claimed the only safe way to eat potato salad was to stick your head in the refrigerator and eat it in there.
Hope it an unbearably precious thing, worth its weight in feathers. If that’s too much to think about, best to tuck it in a pocket anyway, and make it a habit.
She told him television was a bad influence. Probably she was right. Like those white birds he’s been seeing outside the window, it flashes its wings and promises whatever you want, even before you knew you wanted it.
For God’s sake, man,” Ovid nearly shouted, “the damn globe is catching fire, and the islands are drowning. The evidence is staring them in the face.
Iano ordered her back to Ivins to finish her degree in biology. Willa wondered when he would notice Tig was immune to his directives. Tig informed her parents she refused to take out bank loans, with tuition exchange no longer an option, and anyway she’d already learned more than she wanted to know about a ravaged biosphere. The latter was no news to Willa, who’d seen how the girl always took the truth of human selfishness harder than any of her friends, even the history majors.
He crossed his arms over the chair back and smirked his disapproval at Brother Fowles. “Sir, I offer you my condolences. Personally I’ve never been troubled by any such difficulties with interpreting God’s word.” “Indeed, I see that,” Brother Fowles said.
You can’t let your heart go bad like that, like sour milk. There’s always a chance you’ll want to use it later.
I don’t know,” Magda says, “Seems like that’s just how it is with you and me. We’re like islands on the moon.
Chivalry wasn’t dead, it’s just that men didn’t own all the horses anymore, and women of Helene’s ilk didn’t need that kind of rescue.
A storm was coming up from the south, moving slowly. It looked something like a huge blue-gray shower curtain being drawn along by the hand of God.
You can fool history sometimes, but you can’t fool the memory of your intimates.
First thing in the morning, last thing at night, whenever a fight with Tig left her in pieces, it had been her mother who put Willa back together. When someone mattered like that, you didn’t lose her at death. You lost her as you kept living.
They are all for the great captain, while he indentures them and eats their souls and property. Somehow he gets them to side against their own.
Without shelter, we stand in daylight.
Don’t count on it. There’s a lot of white folks out there hanging on to their God-given right to look down on some other class of people.