If you work with or around children, you often hear a lot about how resilient they are. It's true; I've met children who've been through things that would drive most adults to the brink. They look and act, most of the time, like any other children. In this sense — that they don't succumb to despair, that they don't demand a space for their pain — it's very true that children are resilient. But resiliency only means that a thing retains its shape. That it doesn't break, or lose its ability to function. It doesn't mean a child forgets the time she shared in the backyard with her mother gardening, or the fun they had together watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks at the Astro. It just means she learns to bear it. The mechanism that allowed Lisa Sample to keep her head above water in the wak of her mother's departure has not been described or cataloged by scientists. It's efficient, and flexible, and probably transferable from one person to another should they catch the scent on each other. But the rest of the details about it aren't observable from the outside. You have to be closer than you really want to get to see how it works. John Darnielle
A DEFINITION NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children
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Markus Zusak
When God Created Mothers"When the Good Lord was creating mothers, He was into His sixth day of "overtime" when the angel appeared and said. "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one." And God said, "Have you read the specs on this order?"...
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Erma Bombeck
The soul is healed by being with children.
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Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The only love that I really believe in is a mother’s love for her children.
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Karl Lagerfeld
I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child.
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Anne Lamott
More Quotes By John Darnielle
When you punish a person for dreaming his dream Don't expect him to thank or forgive you.
And when the clouds do clear away Get a momentary chance to see The thing I've been trying to beat to death The soft creature that I used to be The better animal I used to be
It's in the nature of the landscape to change, and it's in the nature of people to help the process along...
The wind comes across the plains not howling but singing. It's the difference between this wind and its big-city cousins: the full-throated wind of the plains has leeway to seek out the hidden registers of its voice. Where immigrant farmers planted windbreaks a hundred and...
It’s hard to describe, this feeling of seeing your kids spending time together like adults, meeting up again after being out there in the world like free agents. There’s something giddy and unreal about it. I knew that boy when he was afraid of strangers....
