He had been alone in the world and empty for so long. But she filled him full, and so he believed everything that had been taken out of him might have been for a purpose. To clear space for something better.
She always carried a book, though, in case she needed to read a few pages to avoid unwanted conversation.
So of course time is necessary. But nevertheless damn painful, for it transforms all the pieces of your life – joy and sorrow, youth and age, love and hate, terror and bliss – from fire into smoke rising up the air and dissipating on a breeze.
Contentment is mostly a matter of talking yourself into believing that God will not strike you too hard for leaning in the direction of your hungers.
Disease is nature’s revenge for our destructiveness.
All I can say is that we are mistaken to gouge such a deep rift in history that the things old men and old women know have become so useless as to be not worth passing on to grandchildren.
That’s not a thing any of us are granted. To go back. Wipe away what later doesn’t suit us and make it the way we wish it. You just go on.
Nothing changes what alreaday happened. It will always have happened. You either let it break you down or you don’t.
A lizard in the spring – hear his darling sing. A bird with wings to fly – go back to his darling weep and moan till he dies. A mole in the ground – root a mountain down.
There was a redemption of some kind, he believed, in such complete fulfillment of a desire so long deferred.
He was himself a case in point, and perhaps not a rare one, for his spirit, it seemed, had been burned out of him but he was yet walking.
Verbs. All of them tiring.
We mark some days as fair, some as foul, because we do not see that the character of every day as identical.
Our worst pain is confined within our own skin.
Surely it is a sin to reject the few gifts we are given. Be happy in the flash of time granted to us or hurt forever.
I know I don’t need him, but I think I want him.
It is best not to study too much on who gets what they deserve. It can lead to an overly complicated interpretation of God’s personal attributes.
When everything is immediately available and infinitely reproducible, nothing is valuable.
It is a bad idea to live too long. Few carry it off well.
That’s just pain she said. It goes eventually. And when it’s gone, there’s no lasting memory. Not the worst of it anyway. It fades. Our minds aren’t made to hold on to the particulars of pain the way we do bliss. It’s a gift God gives us, a sign of His care for us.