There’s nothing like getting in trouble to make you feel young.
Already I’ve seen that when you’re pulled away from your normal routine, it’s as though air and sunlight come into your brain and do a little housecleaning.
Sometimes, just when you think you’re going to die from pain, rage steps in to save you. There’s only so much room in a human heart. Thank God. The.
Oh, why isn’t there a Community Center for People Who Need a Little Something? If people would only tell the truth about the way they felt, it would be busy all the time. There could be folding chairs arranged in groups, people sitting there saying, “I don’t know, I just wanted to come here for a while.” I.
When my submission has been claimed, no longer in the name of love and friendship but by reason of some right or power, I have drawn upon the strength that is buried in my nature, I have straightened my shoulders and thrown off the yoke. I alone know the latent force hidden within me. I alone know how much I grieve and suffer and love. – George Sand.
What she knows now is that no one is ever through with love. No one ever should be.
Divorce is a series of internal earthquakes, that’s what it is, one after the other.
Men were ever men.
This is the thing about strong people: you can mostly be scared of them but sometimes the way they are makes you feel safe.
She goes back to bed, turns out the light, and can hear herself start to snore before she falls off into sleep. She doesn’t know why so many people hate snoring. She finds it soothing. White noise, with a ruffle.
He hesitates, then turns and starts up her walk. Gives her a friendly smile, to boot. He wishes she wouldn’t wear a wig, or at least not one that sits so crookedly on her head. It’s a distraction. Sometimes he has to restrain himself from reaching over and giving it a little tug, then smacking her knee in a friendly way and saying, “There you go!” But why risk humiliating her?
It is early morning; outside, the sky is dark and the trees move dramatically in the wind. Soon a storm will come. I want to live to see it. This is the way of nature: to persuade us around one more bend, to beckon us to behold one more vista.
It’s good for you to be a bit uncomfortable from time to time, especially if you’re only a few steps away from relief. People forget about the value of adversity.
Those who say life is a glorious blessing are right. Those who say it is endlessly cruel are also right.
And so, what of it all? What of me and my passions and personas, my great loves and failures of love, my writing, my politics? What of the clanging opinions, the endless queries as to the whys and wherefores of how I chose to conduct myself? In the end, there is but one answer to every question, whether it is spit at me or made as gentlest inquiry: I was I.
I would try to find joy despite the necessary work of grieving, and I knew full well that work was exactly the right word to describe it. It was John’s life that was over, not mine.
That’s life. You’re born, and you get a ride on the Whirligig.
There’s always hope when a kid – or an adult, for that matter – likes to read.
Instinctively, the spider spins the web; just as automatically, the human shields the heart.
Well, I was just going to say that it seems one of the things you have to do in order to finally grow up is to let that what-my-parents-did-to-me stuff go.