The world was full of monsters, and they were all allowed to bite the innocent and the unwary.
Back in the main corridor – what Luke now understood to be the residents’ wing – the little girls, Gerda and Greta, were standing and watching with wide, frightened eyes. They were holding hands and clutching dolls as identical as they were. They reminded Luke of twins in some old horror movie.
Well, you know what they say, Jamie: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I am afraid, but I have been afraid before. All he can take from me is what I would have to give up someday anyhow – my life. I will not let him break me down. I will not let him make me less than I am, if I can possibly help it.
The exhausted mind is obsession’s easiest prey.
It’s about how some people carelessly squander what others would sell their souls to have: a healthy, pain-free body. And why? Because they’re too blind, too emotionally scarred, or too self-involved to see past the earth’s dark curve to the next sunrise. Which always comes, if one continues to draw breath.
On the way home I remembered a bit of old folklore about how to boil a frog. You put it in cold water, then start turning up the heat. If you do it gradually, the frog is too stupid to jump out. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I decided it was an excellent metaphor for growing old.
Anyone who doesn’t think the imagination can kill is a fool.
Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn’t drink because they were creative, alienated, or morally weak. They drank because it’s what alkies are wired up to do. Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in some other jobs, but so what? We all look pretty much the same when we’re puking in the gutter.
No. I was going to say his work changed my life, but that’s not right. I don’t think a teenager has much of a life to change. I just turned eighteen last month. I guess what I mean is his work changed my heart.
How much courage does it take to fire up your tractor and plow under a crop you spent six or seven years growing? How much courage to go on and do that after you’ve spent all that time finding out how to prepare the soil and when to plant and how much to water and when to reap? How much to just say, “I have to quit these peas. Peas are no good for me, I better try corn or beans.
There’s an old joke about Alzheimer’s: the good news is that you meet new people every day.
People have many ways to be lousy to one another, as you’ll find out when you’re older, but I think that all bad behavior stems from plain old selfishness.
Isn’t bravery always sort of beautiful?
Talent is a spooky thing, and has a way of announcing itself quietly but firmly when the right time comes. Like certain addictive drugs, it comes as a friend long before you realize it’s a tyrant.
The horrors of the Inquisition are nothing compared to the fates your mind can imagine for your loved ones.
If you look like you belong in a place, most people think you do.
I love you with all that passes for my heart. I suspect that kind of all-out love becomes a burden to a woman in time, but it’s the only kind I have to give.
You’re a firestarter honey... just one big Zippo lighter.
The wheel of ka turns and the world moves on.