Jere Witherspoon

“When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Make your church a context where parents know that the right response to their teenagers is never to reject them as human beings, never to throw them out.”
― David P. Gushee, Changing Our Mind

“If you care about something you have to protect it – If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany