And whatever my life had been up to that day, it was another life after that. And that is the gospel truth.
I suppose therefore God is the connoisseur of filthied hearts and souls, and can see the old, the first pattern in them, and cherish them for that.
After all the world is indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man we might be continuously happy in it.
It is always worth itemising happiness, there is so much of the other thing in a life, you had better put down the markers for happiness while you can.
The world begins anew with every birth, my father used to say. He forgot to say, with every death it ends. Or did not think he needed to. Because for a goodly part of his life he worked in a graveyard.
It is always worth itemizing happiness, there is so much of the other thing in a life, you had better put down the markers of happiness while you can.
The human animal began as a mere wriggling thing in the ancient seas, struggling out onto land with many regrets. That is what brings us so full of longing to the sea.
Four men killed that day. The phrase sat up in Willie’s head like a rat and made a nest for itself there
Roseanne, Roseanne, if I called to you now, my own self calling to my own self, would you hear me? And if you could hear me, would you heed me?
But I had no idea what I looked like. Children may feel epic and large to theyselves and yet be only scraps to view.
The trust of those in dark need is forgiving work.
I rose and moved towards him. You would have done the same yourself. It is an ancient matter. Something propels you towards sudden grief, or perhaps also sometimes repels. You move away. I moved towards it, I couldn’t help it.
I wonder if I were to have an X-ray at the little hospital, would the machine see my grief? Is it like rust, arheum about the heart?
The real comfort is that the history of the world contains so much grief that my small griefs are edged out, and are only cinders at the borders of the fire. I am saying this again because I want it to be true.
with ringworm, lice bites, and a million bugs. Men so sick they are dying
There are some sufferings that we seem as a creature to forget, or we would never survive as a creature among all the other creatures.
The thing itself, the first thing, will never do us alone, we must be elaborating, improving, poeticising.
Everything bad gets shot at in America, says John Cole, and everything good too.
His people had hogs there till the bottom fell out of hogs. The bottom was always falling out of something in America far as I could see. So it was with the world, restless, kind of brutal. Always going on. Not waiting for no man.
The bottom was always falling out of something in America far as I could see.
For I did not want him to see, or to question me, for here contains already secrets, and my secrets are my fortune and my sanity.
I am dwelling on things I love, even if a measure of tragedy is stitched into everything, if you follow the thread long enough
Because it strikes me there is something greater than judgement. I think it is called mercy.
There is such solace in the mere sight of water. It clothes us delicately in its blowing salt and scent, gossamer items that medicate the poor soul
How is that for some people drinking is a short-term loan on the spirit, but for others a heavy mortgage on the soul?
I am cold, even though the heat of early summer is adequate. I am cold because I cannot find my heart.
It’s a dark thing when the world sets no value on you and your kin, and then Death comes stalking in, in his bloody boots”.
This (white settlers) was the section of humanity that was favored in that place, the Indians had no place no more there. Their tickets of passage were rescinded and the bailiffs of God took back the papers of their soles.
Clinton and his cigar was so much greater a man than Bush and his rifle.