The Moon by Night

The minute anybody starts telling you what God thinks, or exactly why he does such and such, beware.

The rain is raining all around,” Uncle Douglas quoted, “It rains on both the just and the unjust fellow. But more, it seems on the just than on the unjust, For the unjust hath the just’s umbrella.

You know those puzzles with hundreds of tiny pieces? You take one of those pieces all by itself and it doesn’t make sense, does it? You look at one piece and it doesn’t seem to be part of a picture. But you put all the pieces together and you see the meaning of it all. Well, what I, in my heathenish way, Vicky, feel about life, and unfairness, is that we find it hard to realize that there is a completed puzzle. We jump to conclusions and decide that the one little piece we have in our hand is all there is and that it doesn’t make sense.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

Also there’s something very matter-of-fact about pork chops. Heroines of mystery novels are never mentioned eating a dinner of pork chops just before something terrible is about to happen.

All I knew was that at almost fifteen it’s very difficult to be satisfied with the age you are, because you aren’t really any age.

I’ve gone out alone and bellowed in rage at God at the top of my lungs. But the fact that I bellow at him I suppose proves that I think he’s there, doesn’t it? Go ahead and be mad at God if you feel like it, Vicky. [...] But remember when you’re yelling at God, what you're doing is saying, Do it MY way, God, not YOUR way, but MY way

But I kept looking at that enormous sweep of [Texas] land, stretching out to eternity so you couldn’t stay afraid because fears were so small they just lost themselves. The only other place I know where you can see that far and makes you feel the same way is the ocean

John looked up from where he was crouched beside the fire, feeding it little bites of driftwood, and said, ‘We’d better decide who wants hot dogs and who wants hamburgers because we haven’t got too much time.’ Everybody began talking about food, and things were better. There’s something I’ve noticed about food: whenever there’s a crisis if you can get people to eating normally things get better.

Why is it that some grown-ups just seem to go on getting dumber and dumber year by year instead of learning anything?