J. May

“Remember how I used to say, “Life is short, and it’s up to you to make it sweet”? Well, I was wrong about that short part. But I still believe it’s up to each person to make the best of life, to keep trying, no matter what. A lot of it is how you look at it. A lot of it is attitude.

- Sarah L. Delany”
― Sarah L. Delany, On My Own at 107: Reflections on Life Without Bessie

“Anna thought about the men outside on the gallery. She was glad they were there; finding them smoking and talking quietly had been comforting, it was what men did in the evenings when the work was done. Of course, the work was not done, and she doubted that it ever would be. It would go on and on, even after the house was emptied of strangers, long after the wildflowers had blossomed a hundred times on their graves.”
― Howard Bahr, The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War

“Through the door at the end of the hall, Bushrod could see daylight. Gray and sullen it was, but daylight all the same. Through the years Bushrod had seen the dawn come to many fields, after many hard fights, and it was always a sacred moment to him--proof that the universe was still intact in spite of the blood on the ground, the hosts of Departed beginning their first day in eternity, the dead horses and broken gun carriages and scattered equipment--in spite of all the panoramic ruin of the battlefield so brutal and grotesque that it was a wonder God did not bury it in darkness forever--and with it the guilty living, who crept from their holes or their stiff blankets and looked about with astonishment on what they had done. But God never would bury it. He always seemed to want to start over again, whether out of anger or pity Bushrod could not say. And now here was another dawn, after another great fight, and once more God had permitted Bushrod Carter to live.”
― Howard Bahr, The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War

“The revenue arising from his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and, though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda; but to help out his maintenance, he was, according to country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers whose children he instructed.”
― Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow