Jenny Fields felt undone, the way only a person who has been careful can feel when confronted by a mistake.
Jenny Fields felt undone, the way only a person who has been careful can feel when confronted by a mistake.
I'm not afraid, but I'm very nervous.
There was no manifestation of contemporary culture that did not indicate to my grandmother how steadfast was the nation's decline, how merciless our mental and moral deterioration, how swiftly all-embracing our final decadence. I never saw her read a book again; but she referred to books often - as if they were shrines and cathedrals of learning that television had plundered and then abandoned.
Is it a democratic society that condemns people to the accident of conception? What are we-monkeys? If you expect people to be responsible for their children, you have to give them the right to choose whether or not to have children. What are you people thinking of? You're not only crazy! You're ogres!
Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can't even remember having met you
Meaning Michael Milton; meaning the whole thing.
A person's faith goes at its own pace. The trouble with church is the service. A service is conducted for a mass audience. Just when I start to like the hymn, everyone plops down to pray. Just when I start to hear the prayer, everyone pops up to sing. And what does the stupid sermon have to do with God? Who knows what God thinks of current events? Who cares?
It is amazing to me, now, how such wild imaginings and philosophies - inspired by a night charged with frights and calamities - made such perfectly good sense to Owen Meany and me, but good friends are nothing to each other if they are not supportive.
This was not of the nature of a Christlike lesson for Owen Meany to learn, as he lay in the manger, that someone you hate can give you a hard-on.
It´s natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you have to let everything happen to them. You can't interfere with people you love any more than you're supposed to interfere with people you don't even know. And that's hard, ..., because you often feel like interfering -you want to be the one who makes the plans.
Keep passing the open windows.
Oh FUCK the longings and agonies of youth.
A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy
It is your responsibility to find fault with me, it is mine to hear you out. But don't expect me to change.
What do Americans know about morality? They don't want their presidents to have penises but they don't mind if their presidents covertly arrange to support the Nicaraguan rebel forces after Congress has restricted such aid; they don't want their presidents to deceive their wives but they don't mind if their presidents deceive Congress- lie to the people and violate the people's constitution!
It's because even a good man can't always be right, that we need ... rules.
Nothing moves at the Hotel New Hampshire! We're screwed down here-for life!
She sat keenly white and still among them, a witness to everything--maybe determining nothing, possibly judging it all.
As it was, things went from bad to worse, as they often will when amateurs are involved in an activity that they perform in bad temper - or in a hurry.
It's a no-win argument - that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.
When I first came to Canada, I thought it was going to be easy to be a Canadian; like so many stupid Americans, I pictured Canada as simply some northern, colder, possibly more provincial region of the United States-I imagined it would be like moving to Maine, or Minnesota.
It's natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you can't interfere with people you love anymore than you're supposed to interfere with people you don't even know.
Sell my old clothes - I'm off to heaven
Stewart, Jr. who was called Stewie Two, graduated from Steering before Garp was even of age to enter the school; Jenny treated Stewie Two twice for a sprained ankle and once for gonorrhea. He later went through Harvard Business School, a staph infection, and a divorce.
Because I was a Wheelwright-and, therefore, a New England snob-I'd assumed that Phoenix was largely composed of Mormons and Baptists and Republicans;
LAST NITE I HAD A DREAM. NOW I KNOW FOUR THINGS. I KNOW THAT MY VOICE DOESN'T CHANGE - BUT I STILL DON'T KNOW WHY. I KNOW THAT I AM GOD'S INSTRUMENT. I KNOW WHEN I'M GOING TO DIE - AND NOW A DREAM HAS SHOWN ME HOW I'M GOING TO DIE. I'M GOING TO BE A HERO! I TRUST THAT GOD WILL HELP ME, BECAUSE WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO DO LOOKS VERY HARD.
Among adults - and among orphans - Wilbur Larch noted that delirious happiness was rare.
Men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God
What she might have told him was that taxidermy, like sex, is a very personal subject; the manner in which we impose it on others should be discreet.
The history of a city was like the history of a family-there is closeness and even affection, but death eventually separates everyone from each other. It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writer's job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories.
Buster was queer as a cat fart.
MAYBE YOU SHOULD BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR. AT LEAST, YOU GET TO READ STUFF THAT'S WRITTEN BY PEOPLE WHO CAN WRITE! YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING TO BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR, YOU DON'T NEED ANY SPECIAL TALENT, YOU JUST HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT SOMEONE WANTS YOU TO SEE - TO WHAT MAKES SOMEONE ANGRIEST, OR THE MOST EXCITED IN SOME OTHER WAY. IT'S SO EASY!; I THINK THAT'S WHY THERE ARE SO MANY ENGLISH MAJORS!
And so this added consideration - that she never get pregnant - contributed to the moderation of their coupling, which was almost always managed under conditions harsh enough to win the approval of New England's founding fathers
People only ask questions when they're ready to hear the answers.
You take every opportunity given you in this world, even if you have too many opportunities. One day, the opportunities stop, you know.
They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.
The inshore lifeboat was very busy with 39 jobs, and the all-weather lifeboat had 11.
I've always been a fan of the 19th century novel, of the novel that is plotted, character-driven, and where the passage of time is almost as central to the novel as a major minor character, the passage of time and its effect on the characters in the story.
A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy.
I think the sport of wrestling, which I became involved with at the age of 14... I competed until I was 34, kind of old for a contact sport. I coached the sport until I was 47. I think the discipline of wrestling has given me the discipline I have to write.
And I don't want to begin something, I don't want to write that first sentence until all the important connections in the novel are known to me. As if the story has already taken place, and it's my responsibility to put it in the right order to tell it to you.
You've got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.
If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things.
Do you really want to go back to those times when orphanages existed and when many orphans were not adopted
Half my life is an act of revision.
So, you see, it's a real chore for me to write a book review because it's like a contest. It's like I'm writing that book review for every bad book reviewer I've ever known and it's a way of saying thrusts a middle finger into the air this is how you ought to do it. I like to rub their noses in it.
I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey.
There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep.
© 2020 Inspirational Stories
© 2020 Inspirational Stories