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every one of them is precious in the sight of God, every one of them is welcome in my house.”
“When you left, we lost half of everything. Children are everything. The rest is . . . nothing.”
You could get used to each other, get so habituated that you could speak their words right along with them, but you never knew why other people said what they said or did what they did, because they never even knew themselves. Nobody understands anybody.
“I knew you were stupid, because you became a talk-therapy shrink, which is like being a minister of a religion in which you get to be God.”
“That’s what parenting is,” said Mrs. Wiggin. “Indoctrinating your children in the social patterns that you want them to live by.
“If there is a God, I think he’s pretty lousy at his job.” “Or you don’t understand what his job is.”
I’m talking about finding some alien creature and deciding to marry her and stay with her forever, no matter whether you even like each other or not a few years down the road.
All the other things—victories, achievements, honors, causes—they bring only momentary flashes of pleasure. But binding yourself to another person and to the children you make together, that’s life.
“I have someone to grieve for. Whom do you have?”
“Everyone thinks they do, until they take a child into their heart. Only then do you know what it is to be a hostage to love.
His whole world was about to change, his life would be transformed, he might lose everything, he might win everything. But all he could feel that night, as he finally went to bed and drifted off to sleep, was utter, foolish happiness.
It was always my choice, she’d say. You’re part of the work God gave me. Life ends, and I’m not afraid to return to God. I’m only afraid for you, because you keep yourself such a stranger to him.
“Sometimes,” said Petra, “what’s right is not peaceful or passive. What matters is that you do not hide from the consequences. You bear what must be borne.”
Human motivation cannot be documented, at least not with any kind of finality. After all, we rarely understand our own motivations, and so, even when we write down what we honestly believe to be our reasons for making the choices we make, our explanation is likely to be wrong or partly wrong or at least incomplete. So even when a historian or biographer has a wealth of information at hand, in the end he still has to make that uncomfortable leap into the abyss of ignorance before he can declare why a person did the things he did.
