A sailor chooses the wind that takes the ship from a safe port. Ah, yes, but once you're abroad, as you have seen, winds have a mind of their own. Be careful, Charlotte, careful of the wind you choose.
I took a deep breath. 'For you I've got something better than love.' What's that?' I...trust you.' Why?' You'll never hurt me.' Thank you.' But...' But, what?' I said, 'That means I'll hurt you.' Why?' 'Cause, like I said, you'll never hurt me back.
Now give me a kiss, say you love me and off you go." "Sure, Aunt Lu," I said, and I gave her the kiss she wanted. Then I ran out and caught my bus. I didn't say I loved her. I guess I did. But asking someone to say they love you--and she always asked--is like buying yourself a birthday present. It's more than likely exactly what you want. But it must make you feel awfully sad to get it."
I kept asking myself if I felt different, if I was different. The answer was always yes. I was no longer nothing... How odd, I thought; it had taken my mother's death, Father Quinel's murder, and the desire of others to kill me to claim a life of my own.
I think you're more an archivist than a librarian," he said. He told me that archivists and librarians were opposite personas. True librarians are unsentimental. They're pragmatic, concerned with the newest, cleanest, most popular books. Archivists, on the other hand, are only peripherally interested in what other people like, and much prefer the rare to the useful. "They like everything," he said, "gum wrappers as much as books." He said t..
Remember, lad," said the newt, "If it's going to be tommorow, it might as well be today. And if it is today, it could have been yesterday. If it was yesterday, then you're over and done with it, and can write your own book. Think about that."
Something Zachariah told me filled my mind and excited my heart: "A Sailor," he said, "chooses the wind that takes the ship from safe port......but winds have a mind of their home."
Yes, it is hard to discover a truth. But it is much harder to be unable to do anything about it. It's as if you know for certain a building will collapse and not one soul--not even those within--will listen to your warning. Hearing truth makes many deaf.
Yet for quixotic reasons--namely, that I enjoyed writing obits--I had decided to scale back on articles about city life in order to write exclusively about the city's dead. For even less money. It was a strange and inexplicable career move.
I flipped to the author's photo in the Library of America edition of O'Connor's collected works, and forked it over. Solitary examined the photo. "Okay," she said, handing it back, "I'll read it." What in Flannery O'Connor's countenance met with Solitary's approval? "I dunno," she said. "She looks kind of busted up, y'know? She ain't too pretty. I trust her."
In his eagerness to advance onto this new path, he was training himself to cook by simply pairing words. From his reading, he knew that the words balsamic vinegar went with the word asparagus even though he had never tasted either. He knew that rosemary went with chicken and with lemon, even though he confessed that he wouldn't recognize rosemary if he fell into a bush of it.
but that didn't stop him from going to church every week, for almost twenty years now, kneeling and confessing to what he called "the sin of locking a human being in a cage."
He had no use for guns--these were for people who didn't know how to use words. Or, to quote him, "I don't need no Smith and Wesson, man, I got Merriam and Webster."
Though, from my perspective, it was almost cheating to teach a guy whose idea of a love poem was "I wanna make love to you nice in your heart." Nearly any string of vowels and consonants would sing compared to that."