Chavaleh

“Miss Iva ushers the kids off the bus as Farmer Mom watches. She looks at their shoes as they step onto her farm. Shoes don’t lie. Sneakers that light up are telling. Flip-flops hide nothing. Boots hide a lot. Name brands stick out. Knockoffs fall apart. The wear of the sole says much of its owner. None of the kids at Mader Elementary ever have new shoes. But the depth of remaining sole, the degree to which the sock is actually buffered from the ground, is often the measure of poverty these kids exist within.”
― Byron Lane, Big Gay Wedding

“Not to say Daniel doesn’t do his best to prop up my self-esteem, but he’s obliged to; the return date on me has long since passed and he doesn’t have a receipt.”
― Steven Rowley, The Editor

“I think we ache for the certainty of our past, perhaps, more so than the goodness of it. Writers open themselves to many perspectives, they put themselves in their characters’ shoes. It muddies your image of things. Much easier to see the past through a single lens, but it’s never the whole story, is it.”
― Steven Rowley, The Editor

“I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages...the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide... Far too many people misunderstand what *putting away childish things* means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup.”
― Madeleine L'Engle