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“Janet encouraged me to let in the problems of the world enough not to paralyze me but to galvanize me to do more. As I made my way through the ensuing years, I would think about these two words so often--paralyze and galvanize--their strong and opposing forces, and the space between them.”
― What We Wish Were True: Reflections on Nurturing Life and Facing Death
― What We Wish Were True: Reflections on Nurturing Life and Facing Death
“There are lots of ways to be in a family. But here is how to BE a family: You have to spend time together. You have to try to be honest so that people trust you. You have to forgive others their failings and disappointments and ask for forgiveness for your own. You have to let things happen, to surrender to events, and to accept that no matter what you do, life unspools anyway--whether you are alone and crying in your car, or holding hands with your beloved. You have to embrace those fleeting moments when everyone is healthy and happy. And sometimes, you have to make a spectacular celebration, just because you can.”
― Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Coming Home
― Strangers Tend to Tell Me Things: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Coming Home
“She loved the order and the certainty the Church gave her life, arranging the seasons for her, the weeks and the days, guiding her philosophies and her sorrows. She loved the hymns. She loved the prayers. She loved the way the Church--the priests and the Brothers and the nuns, as well as the handy threat of eternal damnation--ordered her disorderly children.
But holiness bored her.
She liked chaos, busyness, bustling. She liked a household strewn with clothes and dust and magazines and books, jump ropes, baseball bats, milk bottles. She like the sight and smell of overflowing ashtrays, of a man who's had a few drinks, of tabletops crowded with cloudy glasses. She loved falling into an unmade bed at the end of the long day, falling in beside her snoring husband--with maybe a child or two snagged in the covers--and never reaching, because sleep overtook her, the part of the Hail Mary that said: Now and at the hour of our death.”
― The Ninth Hour
But holiness bored her.
She liked chaos, busyness, bustling. She liked a household strewn with clothes and dust and magazines and books, jump ropes, baseball bats, milk bottles. She like the sight and smell of overflowing ashtrays, of a man who's had a few drinks, of tabletops crowded with cloudy glasses. She loved falling into an unmade bed at the end of the long day, falling in beside her snoring husband--with maybe a child or two snagged in the covers--and never reaching, because sleep overtook her, the part of the Hail Mary that said: Now and at the hour of our death.”
― The Ninth Hour
Margaret’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Margaret’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
559 books
|
134 friends
323 books
|
74 friends
33 books
|
3 friends
125 books
|
11 friends
126 books
|
106 friends
20 books
|
15 friends
950 books
|
27 friends
473 books
|
32 friends
More friends…
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