My Beautiful Child

by Lisa Desmini & Matt Mahurin

I want to show you everything, my beautiful child. I want to show you how big the sky is and how green the grass is. I want to show you what was here before you were born, and how many ways there are to say hello.

My beautiful child, how strong your cry is! And how bright your smile can be. I want you to smell a spring day, and crush an autumn leaf in your hand. I want to show you everything...

Tales of Protection

by Erik Fosnes Hansen

She noticed that she was about to lose her balance again, forced herself to stay erect. And suddenly it semed to her that this was just a repetition of something, that she had undergone this before; she thought about what she had done as a child, when she had wanted to escape the bad thing, then she had just closed her eyes and said kare kare kare, ma ma ma, without a sound; she had floated away and let everything happen to her, and she had survived, because she had a golden place far behind her eyelids that no one knew about, behind kare kare kare, ma ma ma, where she was alone and nothing could reach her.

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"And in the Gospel of John: 'Whosoever hateth his brother, is a murderer.'"

"What does that mean?"

"It means," Aid says slowly in his grating voice, "that we're all brothers."

House Rules: A Memoir

by Rachel Sontag

It's never the loneliness that nibbles away at a person's insides, but not having room inside themselves to be comfortably alone.

The Secret Scripture

by Sebastian Barry

Dear reader! Dear reader, if you are gentle and good, I wish to clasp your hand. I wish -- all manner of impossible things.

After all the world is indeed beautiful and if we were any other creature than man we might be continuously happy in it.

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The terror and hurt in my story happened because when I was young I thought others were the authors of my fortune or misfortune; I did not know that a person could hold up a wall made of imaginary bricks and mortar against the horrors and the cruel, dark tricks of time that assail us, and be the author therefore of themselves.

The Bell Jar

by Sylvia Plath

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantine and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above those figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which fig to choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

The Gathering

by Anne Enright

We each love someone, even though they will die. And we keep loving them, even when they are not there to love anymore.

The Invitation

by Oriah

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened up by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance in wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it's not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours or mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside, when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in empty moments.