Catherine M. Wilson · 320 pages
Rating: (1.9K votes)
“Your task will be to let your heart grow large enough not to break.”
“Merin smiled. "I fought in battle and your mother bore two children. Of the two of us, I think she was the courageous one.”
“Losing her was the worst of it, but loving her hurt almost as much sometimes.”
“All I can tell you is this. Some hearts break from grief and some from joy. Some even break from love. But hearts break because they are too small to contain the gifts life gives us. Your task will be to let your heart grow large enough not to break.” Namet”
“We trust death to spare us the infirmities of age or the pain of an illness or an injury that is past healing. We trust death to comfort us with forgetfulness of life's sorrows. We trusted that death was a passageway fro life to life.”
“I only wanted her to hold still for a little while, and not to mind that I loved her.”
“I knew what she was doing. Each touch was a question. She was asking me what I would give and what I would withhold, what I would reveal, what I would hide. I had told her that I loved her. Perhaps she was unsure of what I meant, and now she was asking me the questions she couldn’t frame in words. How much of myself would I give her? How much was hers?”
“I wondered how it was possible to be so happy and so miserable all at once.”
“Why is it that wisdom comes to us too late to do us any good?”
“Again and again I asked for permission. May I? Here? And here? Is this too much? Too little? Can you hear me? This is my heart.”
“Is that it?” Jack asked. “No. That is the Xing zheng yuan Hui an Xun fang Shu.” “I was just going to say that,” Tessa said.”
“On November 26, 1963, President Johnson had signed National Security
Action Memorandum, 273, which was in diametrical opposition to JFK’s
NSAM 263. While Kennedy’s body was still warm in his grave when LBJ’s
signature changed future US direction in Vietnam, NSAM 273 had, incredibly
enough, actually been drafted on November 21, 1963, while Kennedy was
still alive. The memo was written by National Security Advisor McGeorge
Bundy (more on him later). Why would such a memo have been created,
when it contradicted JFK’s policy and certainly would not have been signed
by him? LBJ let it be known early on that he wanted to “win” in Vietnam,
and had no intention of following Kennedy’s plans to withdraw completely
by 1965.”
“I think I’m losing myself,” I whisper to her after we’ve come, our bodies naked, sweaty and sated, limbs draped over limbs, hands holding onto hands. My throat feels thick, my breath heavy, my words weigh a ton. “Every time I’m inside you, with you, I think I lose a little bit more.” I turn my head to the side to look at her. She’s staring at me with big, wet eyes so full of everything I could ever want from her. “In the end you might have all my pieces,” I tell her. “Please be gentle with them.”
“Don’t push the river. It will travel at its own speed anyway.”
“Bonaventure could hear The Wanderer's regret. It made the sound of burned skin that cannot scab over because it is too far gone.”
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