"Everyone thinks that the old days were better, or that they were harder, and the modern times are chaotic and complex, or easier all around, but I think people's hearts have always been the same, happ..."
- Brian Doyle
"The coolest most amazing people I have met in my life, I said, are the ones who are not very interested in power or money, but who are very interested in laughter and courage and grace under duress an..."
"For a moment this day, for many moments this May, let us gape in awe at the strength of women, and look upon their sinewy courage with respect and humility, as the Lord looked on His Mother, and still..."
"I am a puzzle and a conundrum and a thunderstorm."
"But simple as the Sign of the Cross is, it carries a brave weight: it names the Trinity, celebrates the Creator, and brings home all the power of faith to the brush of fingers on skin and bone and bel..."
"Simple, powerful, poignant, the Sign of the Cross is a mnemonic device like the Mass, in which we sit down to table with one another and remember the Last Supper, or a baptism, where we remember John ..."
"He is only one of a million no, a billion stories you could tell about the living beings on just this side of the mountain. The fact is that there are more stories in the space of a single second, in ..."
"There are some silences that are so huge, and fraught, and haunted, and weighed, and shocked, that they just are; there's nothing you can say about them that makes any sense. All you can do is witness..."
"...awkward passion is so often so very much more admirable than mere achievement."
"...people would tell you much more than you expected to if you were generically presentable and left silence next to them like a friendly stranger; it was like they were waiting for some friendly sile..."