It's a sign of the hollowness of our sense of self that we seek to cheat death, that we seek to cheat aging.
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Buechner on Four Objects of Love
The love for equals is a human thing — of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing — the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing — to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man.…
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Vodolazkin on the Heterogeneous Life
He had four names at various times. A person’s life is heterogeneous, so this could be seen as an advantage. Life’s parts sometimes have little in common, so little that it might appear various people lived them. When this happens, it is difficult not to feel surprised that all these people carry the same name.
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Walter M. Miller Jr. on Bombs, Bitterness, and Half-Remembered Eden
Bombs and tantrums, when the world grew bitter because the world fell somehow short of half-remembered Eden. The bitterness was essentially against God. Listen, Man, you have to give up the bitterness — "be granting shriv'ness to God," as she'd say– before anything; before love. But bombs and tantrums. They didn't forgive.
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“Trajectory”
Original Poetry from J.D. Smith
