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“Kids are like a spring, or a Stretch Armstrong. No matter how many times they’re passed around, passed off, and passed on . . . they snap back.” He spit through his window. “Hope . . . it’s the fuel that feeds them.”
“Fastest way to the heart is through the stomach.”
Was that true? Do you get to the heart through the stomach? Or is there some other portal?
If you can’t speak, then how do you laugh? And if you can’t laugh, then how do you cry?
“The only monster you need to worry about in this life is the one that stares at you from the mirror each morning. You tame him, make friends with him, and the rest of life is nothing you can’t handle.”
the only limits you face are those you place on yourself.”
hoped for the first time that my real dad would never show up and take me home.
So I wrote this letter to tell you that tonight, I’m going to sleep, and I’m done looking down the driveway.
“If God can make a firefly’s butt light up like a star, then anything is possible. Anything.”
“You know, you’re not the only one with a hole in your chest. Girls get them too. We just fill them differently.”
For most patients with HIV, it’s a daily thought. They might not dwell on it, it might not even depress them, but for most, every time they swallow their meds, it crosses their mind. That has an effect on a person’s soul.”
“You left a pretty big hole in me. And coming home just opened up the wound and exposed the shrapnel left inside.”
“What do you mean?” “My life has been real different than I thought. Ain’t turned out how I hoped . . . nor dreamt. But I’m not the only man in the world to get screwed by life. Lots are worse off than me. That’s life. You take the bad with the good. Rise up through it. Live in the midst of it. It’s the bad that lets you know how good the good really is. Don’t let the bad leave you thinking like there ain’t no good. There is, and lots of it, too.”
Thorns don’t stop you from sniffing. Or putting them in a vase on the kitchen table. You work around them.” He stuck a finger in the air. “Why? ’Cause the rose is worth it.” He looked at me. “Think what you’d miss.”
“Sometimes good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.”
Men spend their lives asking Who am I when the real question is Whose am I? I don’t think you can answer the first until you’ve settled the second. First horse, then cart. Identity does not grow out of action until it has taken root in belonging. The orchid speech taught me that.
‘How did you create that out of a chunk of rock?’ He’d shake his head and say, ‘I didn’t. It was there all along. I just let it out.’
“Inside you is a thing worth putting on a pedestal—worth putting out there for all the world to see. That piece of rock might have been knocked around, roughed up a bit, considered scrap, and thrown on the trash pile . . . but that’s only because they don’t know what’s on the inside. They can’t see like Michelangelo. ’Cause if they could, they’d know that there’s something in there that’s just waiting to jump out. Like there is inside you. I’m sorry for the hammer and chisel. I wish life didn’t work that way.” He pulled a small scrap piece of velvet out of his pocket, unfolded it, and laid it
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“Words that soak into your ears are whispered, not yelled.”
“He said he gave up what he couldn’t keep to gain what he couldn’t lose.”
By giving him access, it only added nails to Unc’s coffin. By keeping it a secret, he’s thrown dirt on it. By admitting he’s known all along that Jack stole the money, he etched his own tombstone.
Love does that. It names the nameless and gives voice to the voiceless.
know this about boys: we are all born with a dad-sized hole drilled in the center of our chest. Our dad’s either fill it with themselves, or as we grow into men and start to sense the emptiness, we medicate it with stuff. Usually addictions.
nothing compares.
What was once beautiful and distinct had lost its brilliance. All the colors bled into one muddled mess of dark brown. But people are not crayons. And where wax melts and can never be recovered, the color of people is part of their DNA. We’re more like stained glass in a cathedral. Somewhere along the way, something dark had been thrown over this guy, preventing the light from shining through.
In a rather inexplicable phenomenon, music makes up a small part of the frequency of waves we see with our eyes. That’s right, music and light are part of the same spectrum. It’s just that we hear part of that spectrum, suggesting that the angels both hear and see light, which adds a whole new dimension to the idea of daybreak, high noon, or sundown.
My job was to shine light on old glass. And when I did, that cathedral window shone glittering blue, crimson red, and roya...
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proving that glass can’t lose its color. It can become darkened by shadow, or painted in error, or dimmed by drink, but you can no more take the music out of a man than you can peel apart the fibers of his DNA.
When God carved this place with His words, He lingered.
