"I felt empty a lot and I sometimes had a sense—and I know this sounds strange—that I really had no existence as my own person, that I could disappear and no one would notice or remember that I had eve..."
- John William Tuohy
"Then there are all of those children, the ones who aren’t resilient. The ones who slowly, quietly die. I think the difference is that the kids who bounce back learn to bear a little bit more than they..."
"I don’t know what I would have done if they had hugged me. I probably would have frozen in place, become stiff. It took most of my life to overcome my distaste for physical contact and not to stiffen ..."
"Imagine being beaten up every day for something you didn’t do and yet, when it’s over, you keep on smiling. That’s what every day of Donald’s life was like. His death was a small death. No one mourned..."
"The next day, when I came home from the library, there was a small, used red record player in my room. I found my mother in the kitchen and spotted a bandage taped to her arm. “Ma,” I asked. “Where di..."
"For the first time in my life, I was eating well and from plates—glass plates, no less, not out of the frying pan because somebody lost all the plates in the last move. Now when we ate, we sat at a fi..."
"Jesus,” I prayed silently, “please fix it so that my turn to read won’t come around.” And then the nun called my name, but before I stood I thought, “I’ll bet you think this is funny, huh, Jesus?” I ..."
"Denny thought our parents needed a combination of material goods and temperamental changes before he could return home. “If Dad buys Ma a car, then she’ll love him, and they’ll get back together and s..."
"I am here because I worked too hard and too long not to be here. But although I told the university that I would walk across the stage to take my diploma, I won’t. At age fifty-seven, I’m too damned o..."
"I hit him for every single thing that was wrong in my life and kicked him in a fierce fury of madness as he sobbed and covered his face and screamed. I hit him because Walter hit me and I hit him beca..."