#ss

Etiquette was so confounding in this country. Still, looking at Mirabella-her fists balled together like small, white porcupines, her brows knitted in animal confusion-I felt a throb of compassion. How can people live like they do? I wondered. Then I congragulated myself. This was a Stage 3 thought. ↗

— Karen Russell

#karen-russell #st-lucys-home #home

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through. ↗

— Paul Valery

#everything #god #made #nothing #nothingness

If you were to go, and hopefully someday you will, you would see a lot of paintings of dead people. You'd see Jesus on the cross, and you'd see a dude get stabbed in the neck, and you'd see people dying at sea and in battle and a parade of martyrs. But Not. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody biting it from the plague or smallpox or yellow fever or whatever, because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of. ↗

— John Green

#cancer #cancer-kids #children-with-cancer #illness #art

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves. ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#age #atomic #being #beings #greatness

It is possible that blondes also prefer gentlemen. ↗

— Mamie Van Doren

#blondes #gentlemen #possible #prefer

I think there's nothing better in the world than a spirited discussion about the Bible and Jesus and God and the Catholic faith, or the Jewish faith, or the Muslim faith - any religion. ↗

— Elizabeth Vargas

#any #better #bible #catholic #catholic faith

The lessons taught in great books are misleading. The commerce in life is rarely so simple and never so just. ↗

— Anita Brookner

#commerce #great #just #lessons #life

Socially, the issue of men's weight is simply not a big deal. ↗

— Nia Vardalos

#big deal #deal #issue #men #simply

When the artist finds himself he is lost. The fact that he has succeeded in never finding himself is regarded by Max Ernst as his only lasting achievement. ↗

— Max Ernst

#self-awareness #self-discovery #self-reflection #art

We keep giggling, happy and nervous, tickled by an incomplete innocence. We both sense that some dark joke is being played on us, even if we can't quite grasp the punch line. ↗

— Karen Russell

#karen-russell #home