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At fifty-five, I found that as life went on, the problems mounted and their solutions only served to make things worse.
In prison men learned first to be suspicious, then fearful, and finally respectful of a higher power.
We had not one strand of DNA in common, going back over twenty thousand years, but she didn’t know that and I didn’t care. Blood may be thicker than water, but family has them both beat.
After all, most of what people say is lies; in church, in court, even under the threat of death. People lie when they think they’re telling the truth. It is one of the most universal human traits.
a woman falls in love she knows just where she is. Her mind as well as her body comes into bloom. When a woman feels love it’s like a great mind opening, like Karl Marx when he first understood capital. When men fall in love, we just turn stupid. A man in love is a man operating without the benefit of history. He thinks that today is different from every other day, that the woman he’s lookin’ at is different, fundamentally, from all other women.
Love will beat you down worse than any bull or truncheon. Love will rob you of your reflexes and everything you know. And because of all that, it will be the greatest challenge you ever meet.
There is no victory until the final victory, my father used to say. His words came back to me and I sighed. Let your comrades celebrate in their foxholes and their trenches, but you remember that the war is still raging and that your enemy is sharpening his bayonets even while your friends laugh and sing.
