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It’s just that everything is so . . . unreliable lately.” “You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water,” he said. “Is that a quote?” He nodded. “Rabindranath Tagore. He’s a great writer. You should read him.
Barbara O'Neal -
The quiet square seemed busy with their ghosts, their stories, and it made me feel peaceful in some arcane way. Life had washed me here on this strange errand. Maybe the best thing to do was to just let it show me what it had in mind.
Barbara O'Neal
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Cooking was my lingua franca, my love language.
Barbara O'Neal -
I didn’t realize it then, you know, but knowing what I know now, he must have been abused physically.” It makes my skin hurt to think of it, of his small gentle self, so heartbreakingly beautiful, being punched or cut or burned.
Barbara O'Neal -
I remember when my sister and I thought there were jewels in the ocean, dancing on top of each swell.
Barbara O'Neal -
He tipped up my face. “I don’t mind.” He kissed me, gently, kissed my cheeks so that then I could taste my tears when he kissed my mouth again. “There is another famous quote from Tagore,” he said, holding my face. “‘I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.’ That’s what this is, you and me.
Barbara O'Neal -
One man, she thought then, could build or destroy, could change time and history, for better or worse. One man. Or one woman.
Barbara O'Neal -
You couldn’t unsee a thing once it was seen, unknow it once it was known.
Barbara O'Neal
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The sweet potato salad from Spoonbread & Strawberry Wine.
Barbara O'Neal -
There are seasons of darkness, yes? Loss and sadness all around.” He tightens his grip. “But if you are patient, the circle turns, and then there is happiness all around, everything good, everyone happy.” He flings a hand out, palm up, as if scattering glitter. “My friend, he just forgot that happiness is part of living too.
Barbara O'Neal -
Honey is a magic elixir—made from the tiny drops of nectar taken from hearts of flowers, carried by little bee feet to a secret cave where it is transformed by time into thick gold sweetness.
Barbara O'Neal -
Yes, I have. I might actually have been falling in love a little bit.
Barbara O'Neal -
I do know that it’s hard to be the children of parents who are obsessed with each other.
Barbara O'Neal -
I have a million questions, but they’ll be so much easier to answer if I don’t have to answer them alone.
Barbara O'Neal
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Ready to make a run for it?” “I don’t know about running, but I’ll hobble as fast as I can.
Barbara O'Neal -
Did I really fall in love.
Barbara O'Neal -
I always read everything when I was a kid-and I do mean everything, from Nancy Drew to Dickens to my dad's John D. MacDonald-but then I went to regular school and the English teachers started telling me to read 'real' books, so I tried. And you know, I kinda went off reading for a while. I had already been reading literary novels and the classics mixed in with whatever else, but-" She waved a hand. "So I went back to reading whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to-reading had been my greatest pleasure in all the world. I mean I never really watched all that much television, because we were moving around, never really had solid digs until I was thirteen, so reading was everything.
Barbara O'Neal -
How could you carry the inside of a person with you and not call them a friend, no matter what the rules said?
Barbara O'Neal -
Oh, I do not want to like him so much. Lust, yes. Not like. I don’t know him at all, but in this gesture I feel the heart of a lion, big and inclusive and wise. It tips open the closed doors of my life.
Barbara O'Neal -
Love is not always destructive.
Barbara O'Neal
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Not everything is a disaster waiting to happen.
Barbara O'Neal -
He sat across from her and took her small hands in his own. "Babe, you don't have to carry the world. I've got it, okay?
Barbara O'Neal -
Seems to me people are mean or evil because they're scared, mostly, or in pain, or afraid they're going to lose something.
Barbara O'Neal