“Pain explains a great deal of human conduct, but the fear of pain even more.”
― Neil Abramson, quote from Unsaid
“Sometimes events that lead us bereft of anything but grief just happen for no reason other than happenstance--a car turns left instead of right, a train is missed, a call comes too late--and the real test of our humanness is whether, in light of that knowledge, we are ever able to recover. When we again find our way despite the inability to manufacture a deeper meaning in our suffering, that I think is when God smiles upon us, proud of the strength of his creation.”
― Neil Abramson, quote from Unsaid
“God lives in the peaks and valleys, the jarring transitions, not in the mundane, the safe, the smooth, or the repetitive. But that means there must be at least a certain amount of dissonance. Without dissonance, there is no need of belief, and without belief there surely is no God.”
― Neil Abramson, quote from Unsaid
“I've seen too much sacrifice to believe that God is behind all of it, and I've seen sacrifice that has no indicia of the hand of God at all. Loss is not always part of some greater plan explainable by reference to the actions of a divine being with a divine purpose.”
― Neil Abramson, quote from Unsaid
“Because I want my voice to be the last thing she hears, not the sound of oncoming traffic. I want her to feel gentle hands as she goes, not the force of a car crushing her sternum. I’m sorry, but she deserves that. We all do.” David”
― Neil Abramson, quote from Unsaid
“Granma said everybody has two minds. One of the minds has to do with the necessaries for body living. You had to use it to figure out how to get shelter and eating and such like for the body... She said we had to have that mind so as we could carry on. But she said we had another mind that had nothing atall to do with such. She said it was the spirit mind.
Granma said if you used the body-living mind to think greedy or mean; if you was always cuttin' at folks with it and figuring how to material profit off'n them ... then you would shrink up your spirit mind to a size no bigger 'n a hickor'nut.
Granma said that when your body died, the body-living mind died with it, and if that's the way you had thought all your life there you was, stuck with a hickor'nut spirit, as the spirit mind was all that lived when everything else died...
Granma said that the spirit mind was like any other muscle. If you used it it got bigger and stronger. She said the only way it could get that way was using it to understand, but you couldn't open the door to it until you quit being greedy and such with your body mind. Then understanding commenced to take up, and the more you tried to understand, the bigger it got.
Natural, she said, understanding and love was the same thing; except folks went at it back'ards too many times, trying to pretend they loved things when they didn't understand them. Which can't be done.
I see right out that I was going to commence trying to understand practical everybody, for I sure didn't want to come up with a hickor'nut spirit.”
― Forrest Carter, quote from The Education of Little Tree
“The dwarf bread was brought out for inspection. But it was miraculous, the dwarf bread. No one ever went hungry when they had some dwarf bread to avoid. You only had to look at it for a moment, and instantly you could think of dozens of things you'd rather eat. Your boots, for example. Mountains. Raw sheep. Your own foot.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Witches Abroad
“It's what you do to yourself when you go mad with rage. You have no idea how much you can hurt yourself with your own strength.”
― Lian Hearn, quote from Across the Nightingale Floor
“I trust you all slept well,” I said, deliberately keeping my tone light. I returned Malich’s glare with a tight-lipped grin.
“Yes, we did,” Kaden answered quickly.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
― Mary E. Pearson, quote from The Kiss of Deception
“Love isn't supposed to make sense. It's completely illogical.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight
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