thought-provoking

Anytime a group of people assemble for a common cause, amazing things can happen.

...I just gave up trying to be a Christian... Let's face it, I ain't got the knack for holiness. Besides, I didn't have the slightest little desire to join the likes of Reverend Pelham at the dinner table for fourteen minutes, much less at the banquet table of Heaven eternally. Eternity is a mighty long time to be stuck with people who judge every word you say and think and condemn most of what you do. It struck me as pretty miserable company. And if Reverend Pelham was the kind of company God preferred to keep, well, I just hoped they'd be happy together.

Coincidence is the word we use when we can't see the levers and pulleys.

Even on this level, it is at bottom not deception [men] hate but the dire, inimical consequences of certain kinds of deception

There was some little local controversy too, about a fundraising effort called Suzie's Closet--folks getting together in church basements to make care packages for the plantations--blankets and candy bars.....first they interviewed a local advocate for the homeless, asking why our attention shouuld be down there, "when there's so much suffering right here at home."...it was the usual stuff --all the new stories and just the old stories again.

She said, "Do you have more things that you need, or more that you don't need?" I said, "It depends on what it means to need.

Is religion defending our physical integrity or is it just opposed to fashion?

He said, You know, whoever hurt youdies every time they look in the mirror.That is how they pay."She crossed her arms."And one day, Maria, you will die too,but there's no reason for you to dieevery day.

Sweet and savory, it was the honey of our existence, DNA with the message: This is who I am.

Shattered by the cumulative effect of so much horror and death, Joan was again afflicted by a crisis of faith. How could a good and benevolent God let such a thing happen? How could He so terribly afflict even children and babies, who were not guilty of any sin?

If these self-anointed leaders did not keep the people aroused with calls to preserve the Revolution, or to defend it from one imaginary foe after another, then the people might shake themselves awake from the trance they were in and begin to question the very men who had drenched their streets in blood and make France pariah among the civilized nations of the world.

Are you a Christian? she said.I answered:I am a Christian, I am a Jew, I am a Catholic, I am Muslim.I am each and everyone of you, look into the mirror and you will see me,as i see you..

Once they had been equal in their separate freedoms. They had set out to have children as lightly as if they were playing house, and now her necessarily domestic life bored him, and she was bound to it in her body and imagination. This imbalance was fated, built into their biology.

Man sees what he knows, not what he seesShort story, The Mallard

The fact is, nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best that he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius.

There's only one thing a bully respected: bigger bully.

GOD IS YOUR THOUGHTS

I remember stories. I connect the dots and then out of that comes a story. And the dots that don't fit into the story just slide away, maybe. Like when you spot a constellation. You look up and you don't want to see all the stars. All the stars just look like the big...mess that they are. But you want to see shapes; you want to see stories, so you pick them out of the sky.