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
“Do you think, for a moment," she whispered, "that I would have done anything differently? That I could have chosen anything but this, now?" Her dark eyes were alive, bright, shining. "I would suffer any lie, Persephone, for you.”
― Sarah Diemer, quote from The Dark Wife
“What a strange world it was when a girl who wanted to go to school had to defy militants with machine guns - as well as her own family.”
― Malala Yousafzai, quote from I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World (Young Readers Edition)
“Colors shift like smoke within the branch beneath our feet. Sprites jump from leaf to leaf, leaving sprinklings of glittery dust in the air behind them. Droplets of water are strung like pearls from the silver strands of a spider’s web. Bluebottle glow-bugs stick to the leaves and branches, lighting up the night with their blue-green bodies. And high above us, clouds are draped like sashes of color across the sky. Amethyst, azure, jade.”
― Rachel Morgan, quote from The Faerie Guardian
“When I think of all the pretty and lovely girls who have done their best to attach him, and he tells me that he has offered for an insipid female who has neither fortune nor any extraordinary degree of beauty, besides being stupidly shy and dowdy, I – oh, I could go into strong hysterics!”
― Georgette Heyer, quote from Sprig Muslin
“The best way to get a handle on the subject would be to ask the experts, but one does not simply walk into a church or synagogue and ask to speak with a demonologist. There are not that many of them; their names are confidential, and they are obliged to report their experiences only to their superiors. Even Ed Warren will not tell all about these horrendous black spirits that come in the night bearing messages and proclamations of blasphemy. When pressed on the matter, in fact, Ed’s reply is: “There are things known to priests and myself that are best left unsaid.” Upon what, then, does Ed Warren base his opinions? Is there proper evidence or corroboration to substantiate his claims? “People who aren’t familiar with the phenomenon sometimes ask me if I’m not involved in a sort of ultrarealistic hallucination, like Don Quixote jousting with windmills. Well, hallucinations are visionary experiences. This, on the other hand, is a phenomenon that hits back. My knowledge of the subject is no different than that of learned clergymen, and they’ll tell you as plainly as I will that this isn’t something to be easily checked off as a bad dream. “I can support everything I say with bona fide evidence,” Ed goes on, “and testimony by credible witnesses and blue-ribbon professionals. There is no conjecture involved here. My statements about the nature of the demonic spirit are based on my own firsthand experiences over thirty years in this work, backed up by the experiences of other recognized demonologists, plus the experiences of the exorcist clergy, plus the testimony of hundreds of witnesses who’ve been these spirits’ victims, plus the full weight of hard physical evidence. Theological dogma about the demonic simply proves consistent with my own findings about these spirits in real life. But let me be more specific. “The inhuman spirit often identifies itself as the devil and then—through physical or psychological means—proves itself to be just that. Again speaking from my own personal experiences, I have been burned by these invisible forces of pandemonium. I have been slashed and cut; these spirits have gouged marks and symbols on my body. I’ve been thrown around the room like a toy. My arms have been twisted up behind me until they’ve ached for a week. I’ve incurred sudden illnesses to knock me out of an investigation. Physicalized monstrosities have manifested before me, threatening death,”
― quote from The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren
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