Tracy Kidder · 277 pages
Rating: (13.5K votes)
“... "You may not see the ocean, but right now we are in the middle of the ocean, and we have to keep swimming.”
― Tracy Kidder, quote from Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness
“In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.”
― Tracy Kidder, quote from Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness
“I do believe in God. I think God has given so much power to people, and intelligence, and said, 'Well, you are on your own. Maybe I'm tired, I need a nap. You are mature. Why don't you look after yourselves?' And I think He's been sleeping too much.”
― Tracy Kidder, quote from Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness
“So many people, he thought, don't listen to the content of what you say but only to the noises you make.”
― Tracy Kidder, quote from Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness
“He sniffed, and said as others had before him and others no doubt would again, "I have learned never to say, 'Never again.”
― Tracy Kidder, quote from Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness
“He would come to feel that history, even more than memory, distorts the present of the past by focusing on big events and making one forget that most people living in the present are otherwise preoccupied, that for them omens often don't exist.”
― Tracy Kidder, quote from Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness
“One shouldn't expect anyone to be complete at any given moment.”
― Tracy Kidder, quote from Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness
“I stared at the faces of the dead students. “You know, Zacharie, just looking at them, I can’t tell you which ones were Tutsis, which Hutus.” “Exactly!” said Deo in a loud whisper. Evidently, one was supposed to whisper here. “And neither could the killers!” “The killers couldn’t see the difference, too,” whispered Zacharie. “So they ask. Because they can’t tell. We are the same people.”
― Tracy Kidder, quote from Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness
“When too much is too much or too bad is too bad, we laugh as if it was too good.”
― Tracy Kidder, quote from Strength in What Remains: A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness
“Here,” he said abruptly. “Turn here.” A rutted path ran up a little rise toward a beige trailer. “This is Grover's place.” The trailer sat exposed on a treeless hill. A perfectly ordered woodpile stood in the yard to the left. Each log seemed to have been cut to an identical length, and they were piled in a crisscross fashion, with each layer running perpendicular to the one below and above. A small patch of earth to the right of his stoop had been cleared of brush and raked smooth. Two lawn chairs sat evenly spaced against the skirting of the trailer. There were no junk cars, no engine parts, no kids' bicycles — just Grover's old Buick parked in a spot marked off by a frame of fist-sized rocks arranged in a perfect rectangle. Dan glanced over at me. The twinkle was back in his eye. “Goddamn reservation Indian,” he muttered. “Lost his culture.” Then he sat back and let out a long rolling laugh that seemed, like prairie thunder, to come from the beginning of time.”
― Kent Nerburn, quote from Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder
“George's hand lifted and fell away again. It seemed an insult to imply that anything so small as a touch could stop the raw feeling in Sir Stephen's suddenly dark and haunted eyes.”
― Mette Ivie Harrison, quote from The Princess and the Hound
“If you sense that someone feels disconnected, reach out to them," the speaker urges. "buy them a soda. Compliment their new hairdo. It'll make them feel better, and you'll feel better knowing you've been a channel of grace."
Jolene leans over and whispers, "My pen is feeling disconnected. Will you be a channel of grave and get it for me?"
**********
Chelsea, quit picking at your scab," a girl in front of me says to her friend as we file out. "It's gross." Then she gasps in mock horror. "Or maybe it's a cry for help! Be strong, Chelsea! Stay with the living!”
― Lauren Myracle, quote from Bliss
“There is justice in an insanely cruel world.”
― Carol Plum-Ucci, quote from The Body of Christopher Creed
“Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me,* for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”i 18 Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and what he told her.”
― quote from St. Joseph New American Bible
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