Amanda

“A group of young women bustled past, brushing Marielle’s shoulder. She looked at them wistfully, wishing to be them once again. Young. Happy. Carefree. Was life better then? Or did young people just have the energy to better deal with its crushing disappointments”
― Steven Rowley, The Celebrants

“George Washington, several weeks into his presidency in 1789, described in a letter to the United Baptist Churches of Virginia as “the horrors of spiritual tyranny.” Washington was hardly alone: From skeptics like Benjamin Franklin to committed Christians like John Jay, the founders shared John Adams’s view that America was conceived not “under the influence of Heaven” or in conversation with the Creator, but rather by using “reason and the senses.”
― Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism

“Marielle was the life of the party, a weight lifted from her as if she had molted her skin and been reborn as someone new. Maybe it wasn’t a funeral she needed so much as permission.”
― Steven Rowley, The Celebrants

“Death is the starlit strip between the companionship of yesterday and the reunion of tomorrow.”
― Steven Rowley, The Celebrants