Every Good Friday, this anchored but ever-changing anniversary of my accident, I go to the little creek that saved my life and light one more candle. I offer thanks for two facts: that I am one year older, and that I am one year closer to death.
She says the problem with most Christians is that they show up once a week to pray that God’s will be done- and when it is, they complain.
Love is a delicate thing that needs to be cosseted and protected. Love is not robust and love is not unyielding. Love can crumble under a few harsh words, or be tossed away with a handful of careless actions. Love isn’t a steadfast dog at all; love is more like a pygmy mouse lemur.
As Blake wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
Talking with the mouth of a beast won’t ease your pain.
Nella vita le sventure ci colgono di sorpresa, spesso con violenza, proprio come l’amore.
Belief in a better future is an amazing gift.
In those days, you must understand, children were basically thought to be inadequate adults. A child’s nature was not something that could be developed, because character was set at birth; childhood was a period of revelation, not development, so when my language abilities appeared they were thought to have always existed, placed there by God, waiting to be made known.
Any man who believes he can describe love’, I answered, ’understands nothing about it.
Sometimes love outlasts even death.
How could you escape a past that was so determined to make you pay?
Morphine is like a religious zealot on a mission; it searches for body parts to convert, offering milk-and-honeyed dreams to flow sluggishly through your veins.
Our “conversation” was a kaleidoscope of brilliant vibrations.
It’s our scars that make us who we are.
It’s a strange but consistent trait of people who consider themselves unattractive. They look embarrassed if you suggest that they might be interested in someone; because they feel unworthy of receiving attention, they also deny that they would dare to give it.
I’m rediscovering my backbone, which is a good start.
As soon as a man has chosen a side in war, he’s already picked the wrong one.
Monsters are divine portents.
What an unexpected reversal of fate: only after my skin was burned away did I finally become able to feel. Only after I was born into physical repulsiveness did I come to glimpse the possibilities of the heart: I accepted this atrocious face and abominable body because they were forcing me to overcome the limitations of who I am, while my previous body allowed me to hide them. I am not a hero in soul and never will be, but I am better than I was.
I believe that if you don not listen to your heart on this matter, you will regret it forever.
The morphine dripped and the snake inhabited every inch of my spine, continuing to flick at the base of my skull with her wicked tongue. Lick and kiss, drip drip drip dropped the drugs, hiss hiss hiss spoke the snake. The sibilant sermons of the snake as she discoursed upon the disposition of my sinner’s soul seemed ceaseless.