Rachel

“Handshaking is about balance, really, between the limp fish shake and the bone-crushing vise. Perhaps someday I'll graduate to the two-handed shake that a spry nun once gave me at a soup kitchen, her hands cupped around my own with a gentle press, as though listening to me was all she wanted to do.”
― Nicole Sheets

“A good spice often deceives us into thinking that someone is a good cook.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Sometimes I try to pray, late at night when I am unable to sleep, my bed hot from my body and me tossing and turning. It's hard not to pray in a rehearsed way, and I can feel myself perform a routine even in my most desperate moments: "Oh Lord, please help me do X or feel Y." So I try to sink back into myself, to a self that is unaware of church and religion, to a more primal self. I imagine God as the night sky, not a man or even a person, and then I try just to be me, to be real, to experience my humanity with God as a witness.”
― Paula Carter

“But, in the early morning sunlight, dressed in their white gowns, the possibility of sin seemed to have been extinguished. Their sins were expunged. Major catastrophes like cheating on your wife and leaving your family, could no longer happen, would no longer happen.
But, of course, they did, and they do.”
― Paula Carter