Mary Ann Shaffer

I have gone to [this bookshop] for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadn__ known I wanted.

That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.

Then I imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again.

She gathered a circle of children around her and commenced singing 'For Those Who Peril on the Sea' over their little heads. But no, 'safety from storms' wasn't enough for her. God had to keep them from being blown up too. She set about ordering the poor things to pray for their parents every night- who knew what the German soldiers might do to them? Then she said to be especially good little boys and girls so Mama and Daddy could look down on them from heaven and BE PROUD OF THEM...she had those children crying and sobbing fit to die.I was too shocked to move, but no, not Elizabeth. No, quick as an adder's tongue, she had ahold of Adelaide's arm and told her to SHUT UP.'Let me go!' Adelaide cried. 'I am speaking the Word of God!'Elizabeth, she got a look on her that would turn the devil to stone, and then she slapped Adelaide right across the face!

I kept trying to explain and he kept shouting until I began to cry from frustration. Then he felt remorseful, which was so unlike him and endearing that I almost changed my mind and said yes. But then I imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again.

All his flowers have been awaiting me on my arrival. I don't know whether to feel flattered or hunted.

But the truth is that I'm gloomy - gloomier than I ever was during the war. Everything is so broken, Sophie: the roads, the buildings, the people. Especially the people.

Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person's name suddenly pops up everywhere you go? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Mr. Simpless, my parson friend, calls it Grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and "fruitfulness" is drawn in.

Oh bless Speranza, for giving her son such a preposterous name as Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde.

He's got that way of believing his opinion is the truth, but he's not disagreeable about it. He's too sure he's right to bother being disagreeable.

I don__ much care for people__ever have, never will. I got my reasons. I never met a man half so true as a dog. Treat a dog right and he__l treat you right__e__l keep you company, be your friend, never ask you no questions. Cats is different, but I never held that against them.

I never met a man half so true as a dog. Treat a dog right, and he'll treat you right. He'll keep you company, be your friend, and never ask you no questions. Cats is different, but I never held that against 'em.

Sorrow has rushed over the world like the waters of the Deluge, and it will take time to recede. But already, there are small islands of - hope? Happiness? Something like them, at any rate.

Visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and next year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it.

Boredom is a powerful reason, and the prospect of fun is a powerful draw - especially when you are young.

I believe I am becoming pathetic. I'll go further, I believe that I am in love with a flower-growing, wood-carving quarryman/carpenter/pig farmer. In fact, I know I am. Perhaps tomorrow I will become entirely miserable at the thought that he doesn't love me back - may, even, care for Remy- but at this precise moment I am succumbing to euphoria. My head and stomach feel quite odd.

Friends, show me a man who hates himself, and I'll show you a man who hates his neighbors more! He'd have to__ou'd not grant anyone else something you can't have for yourself__o love, no kindness, no respect!

Do you know what sentence of his (Wordsworth) I admire the most? It is "The bright day is done, and we are for the dark." I wish I'd known those words on the day I watched those German troops land, plane-load after plane-load of them--and come off ships down in the harbor! All I could think of was damn them, damn them, over and over. If I could have thought the words __he bright day is done and we are for the dark,_ I__ have been consoled somehow and ready to go out and contend with circumstance__nstead of my heart sinking to my shoes.