Jan Karon

Love is an actual need, an urgent requirement of the heart," he read aloud from an old essay on marriage that he found in his files."Every properly constituted human being who entertains an appreciation of loneliness...and looks forward to happiness and content feels the necessity of loving. Without it, life is unfinished...

Love is an endless act of forgiveness.

I can't say I have any confidence in confidence. I have confidence that God is with us in all things, both tender and tough.

Lord, make me a blessing to someone today.

Professor Morgan had called [Dooley] 'a lad of few words.' That wasn't true. There were words spilling around in him all the time. Too many words. His problem was organizing them.

Why can't life always be lived under the stars,' she said, 'with great music and family and friends?

While most people took family for granted, he [Father Tim] took it for grace.

That was his favorite thing about books__hey took you off to other people__ lives an_ places, but you could still set in your own chair by th__il heater, warm as a mouse in a churn.

... for fog was merely a cloud that wasn't too smitten with itself to visit terra firma.

In World War One, they called it shell shock. Second time around, they called it battle fatigue. After 'Nam, it was post-traumatic stress disorder.

It was a wonderful life. To have a stage play right in this room, with real people acting real parts.

As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Viola! Bookshelves!

God wastes nothing.

Listening is among the most generous ways to give. When a loved one talks to us_ whether their words appear to be deep or shallow_ listen. For in some way, they are baring their souls.

I thought of you when I read this quote from "Come Rain or Come Shine (A Mitford Novel)" by Jan Karon -"Listening is among the most generous ways to give. When a loved one talks to us_ whether their words appear to be deep or shallow_ listen. For in some way, they are baring their souls.

As worthless as guilt was known to be, he couldn't help feeling it, seeing his wife work herself to exhaustion for a parish tea that would last only two hours.

Merry Christmas!' someone shouted. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. 'Merry Christmas!''Merry Christmas!''C-cookies for ever'body!' Sammy hollered. And looking both ways, they all fled across to the light, and the warmth, and the books, and the mystery.

Maybe it's because he never had any control over what was happening to him as a boy. Being late was somehow a way of taking charge.