Meredith

“There was something of Francis in the boy, something pure and genuine and flawed. That type didn't think twice before running headlong into a burning house or a young girl's arms.”
― Johanna Moran, The Wives of Henry Oades

“... Tom got to rattling off the pranks he and his school boy buddies pulled ... and what I saw wasn't an old man gone wistful but rather an old man still resonating to the glee of a young heart.”
― Michael Perry, Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace

“How are the Indians on cats?"
"I never saw one. Plenty of dogs, though."
"They eat the dogs, don't they?"
"That's the Shoshones," I said. "A dog or coyote is sacred to a Comanche. You would be cursed."
"But they do eat human beings occasionally?"
"That's the Tonkawas," I said.
"Never the Comanches."
"A Comanche who ate a man would be killed by the tribe immediately, because supposedly it becomes an addiction."
"Interesting," he said. He was scratching his chin. "And this Sun Dance they all talk about?"
"That's the Kiowas," I said. "We never did that.”
― Philipp Meyer, The Son

“He had made his decision. Later in life Ann would learn that when certain men made decisions no matter how much it might torture them afterwards they would stick with their decision. Men, she learned, would rather suffer than change their minds or their habits. They could develop elaborate systems for containing pain, sometimes so successful they would remain completely unaware of the vastness of the pain they possessed.”
― Susan Minot, Evening