Violence, from one angle, looked like mercy from another.
I tell them that there is nothing more selfish than trying to change someone’s mind because they don’t think like you. Just because something is different does not mean it should not be respected.
A mother has nine months to get used to sharing the space where her heart is; for a father it comes on sudden, like a storm that changes the landscape forever.
My whole life, this is how I’ve defined the paranormal: can’t understand it, can’t explain it, can’t deny it.
I learned a lot that night. For example, that part of being the magician’s assistant means coming face-to-face with illusion. That invisibility is really just knotting your body in a certain way and letting the black curtain fall over you. That people don’t vanish into thin air; that when you can’t find someone, it’s because you’ve been misdirected to look elsewhere.
And naturally she wanted to believe she would have been a hero, when push came to shove. But you never knew what path you’d take until you got to that crossroads.
When they laugh, it sounds like confetti.
When it comes to social justice, the role of the white ally is not to be a savior or a fixer. Instead, the role of the ally is to find other white people and talk to make them see that many of the benefits they’ve enjoyed in life are direct results of the fact that someone else did not have the same benefits. I.
If we are meant to only have children who never encounter difficulty in life, then no one should be born.
Corinne is one of those people for whom life is just the space between crises.
Death is the guest you didn’t invite: arriving when you least expect it, least need it and when you least want it.
It’s not my fault that my awesomeness intimidates people.
The whole point of this examination is to make me feel lesser than... but I have spent 20 years seeing how beautiful women are. Not because of how they look, but because of what their bodies can withstand.
Children are the anchors of a mother’s life. – SOPHOCLES, Phaedra, fragment 612.
In the real world, you can’t just turn a page and feel better.
In psychoanalytical theory there is a phenomenon called transference. The therapist becomes a blank screen, onto which the patient projects some incident or feeling that began in childhood... it would not be a far reach for someone to look at my feelings for Jess and assume that, in the context of our relationship as tutor and pupil, I am not in love. I’m just in transference.
Reality is frigid; I have to dip one toe at a time and grow accustomed to the shock before wading in further.
She falters, then gather up the weeds of her thoughts and offers me the saddest, truest bouquet.
You have to understand – there is a romance to Africa. You can see a sunset and believe you have witnessed the hand of God. You watch the slow lope of a lioness and forget to breathe. You marvel at the tripod of a giraffe bent to water. In Africa, there are iridescent blues on the wings of birds that you do not see anywhere else in nature. In Africa, in the midday heat, you can see blisters in the atmosphere. When you are in Africa, you feel primordial, rocked in the cradle of the world.
I’ve always thought elephants walk as if they have music being piped into their heads that no one else can hear. And from the roll of their hips and their swagger, I’m going to guess that the artist is Barry White.