Julia Spencer-Fleming · 370 pages
Rating: (10.1K votes)
“I believe that God hears our prayers, and cherishes them. I believe He answers by sending us His spirit, giving us strenght, and peace, and insight. I don't think He responds by turning away bullets and curing cancer. Though sometimes that does happen."
Harlene frowned. "In other words, sometimes, the answer is no?"
"No. Sometimes the answer is "This is life, in all its variety. Make your way through it with grace, and never forget that I love you.”
― Julia Spencer-Fleming, quote from In the Bleak Midwinter
“Russ decided the best defense was a good offense. "I'm Russell Van Alstyne, Millers Kill chrief of police." He held out his hand. She shook firm, like a guy.
"Clare Fergusson," she said. "I'm the new priest at Saint Alban's. That's the Episcopal Church. At the corner of Elm and Church." there was a faint testiness in her voice. Russ relaxed a fraction. A woman priest. If that didn't beat all.
"I know which it is. There are only four churches in town." He saw the fog creeping along the edges of his glasses again and snatched them off, fishing for a tissue in his pocket. "Can you tell me what happened, um..." What was he supposed to call her? "Mother?"
"I go by Reverend, Chief. Ms. is fine, too."
"Oh. Sorry. I never met a woman priest before."
"We're just like the men priests, except we're willing to pull over and ask directions.”
― Julia Spencer-Fleming, quote from In the Bleak Midwinter
“She was pretty, yeah, but pretty like hundreds of other girls. You," he dabbed the bread in the air as if sketching her, "you're...memorable. Who you are just shines through your face.”
― Julia Spencer-Fleming, quote from In the Bleak Midwinter
“If you know a person’s history, you can use it to help predict what that person might do. A person’s history can be the key to understanding his motivation for committing a crime.”
― Julia Spencer-Fleming, quote from In the Bleak Midwinter
“Because the things you have, and the neighborhood you live in, doesn’t have anything to do with what kind of human being you are.”
― Julia Spencer-Fleming, quote from In the Bleak Midwinter
“He tells them he and his wife are keeping the baby, because it’s the last link to their little girl or some cowpuckie like that.”
― Julia Spencer-Fleming, quote from In the Bleak Midwinter
“As long as the sole ruler and disposer of the universe, the nous, remained excluded from artistic activity, things were mixed together in a primeval chaos: this was what Euripides must have thought; and so, as the first "sober" one among them, he had to condemn the "drunken" poets. Sophocles said of Aeschylus that he did what was right, though he did it unconsciously. This was surely not how Euripides saw it. He might have said that Aeschylus, because he created unconsciously, did what was wrong. The divine Plato, too, almost always speaks only ironically of the creative faculty of the poet, insofar as it is not conscious insight, and places it on a par with the gift of the soothsayer and dream-interpreter: the poet is incapable of composing until he has become unconscious and bereft of understanding.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Birth of Tragedy/The Case of Wagner
“Speaking of these attitudes turned Temple’s mind to a parallel: “I find a very high correlation,” she said, “between the way animals are treated and the handicapped.… Georgia is a snake pit—they treat [handicapped people] worse than animals.… Capital-punishment states are the worst animal states and the worst for the handicapped.”
― Oliver Sacks, quote from An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales
“In 1856 the Know-Nothings even ran a former president, Millard Fillmore, as their presidential candidate. "Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid", observed Abraham Lincoln. "As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal'. We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except Negroes'. When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except Negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics'".”
― Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., quote from The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society
“Am I going to be this way for the rest of my life, always waiting for something bad to happen? Will I never truly be able to trust anyone? I worry that when I'm older, I'll be so afraid that people won't like me that I'll have trouble believing it when they actually do.”
― Jodee Blanco, quote from Please Stop Laughing at Me... One Woman's Inspirational Story
“It’s hard to grieve in a town where everything that happens is God’s will. It’s hard to know what to do with your emptiness when you’re not supposed to have emptiness.”
― Miriam Toews, quote from A Complicated Kindness
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