I Know This Much Is True

by Wally Lamb

“Grief has no gender, Mr. Birdsey,” she said.

I opened people’s eyes.” “About?” “About the stupidity of war!

The Uses of Enchantment, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The King and the Corpse.

Books recommended to the main character

liked the way you could take a scythe or a shovel and tackle a job, then look back at what you’d accomplished without waiting for some know-it-all professor’s seal of approval.

But what are our stories if not the mirrors we hold up to our fears?”

“Life is not a series of isolated ponds and puddles; life is this river you see below, before you. It flows from the past through the present on its way to the future.

“Life is a river,” she repeated. “Only in the most literal sense are we born on the day we leave our mother’s womb. In the larger, truer sense, we are born of the past—connected to its fluidity, both genetically and experientially.”

“What are you asking God for?” I joked. “A million dollars? Two million?” “I’m not asking Him for anything,” he said. “I’m thanking Him for good food and wine, good health and famiglia.”

Depression was, in some ways, a crisis of energy. I had heard her say that before; we were in reruns.

“That I have to let go of grudges.”

that power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed.