“Sometimes I think it’s better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than to just be… safe. At least she knows she’s living.”

Sometimes I say I don’t believe in God and Jesus and Mary. I’m a bad Catholic because I miss mass once in a while and I grumble when, at confession,

Well’ Francie decided, ‘I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life – and nothing else but’.

But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.

What must I do, mother, what must I do to make a different world for her? How do I start?” “The secret lies in the reading and the writing. You are able to read.

All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the kind of life its in him to live.

Suffering is also good, it makes a person rich in charachter.

I get a heavy penance for something I couldn’t help doing. But good or bad, I am a Catholic and I’ll never be anything else.

It takes a lot of doing to die.

It’s come at last,” she thought, “the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache. When there wasn’t enough food in the house you pretended that you weren’t hungry so they could have more.

If there was only one tree like that in the world, you would think it was beautiful. But because there are so many, you just can’t see how beautiful it really is.

Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.

Francie was ten years old when she first found an outlet in writing. What she wrote was of little consequence.

Everything, decided Francie after that first lecture, was vibrant with life and there was no death in chemistry. She was puzzled as to why learned people didn’t adopt chemistry as a religion.

No. I don’t want to need anybody. I want someone to need me … I want someone to need me.

Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.

It’s come at last”, she thought, “the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.

If something’s working, you lean into it. You don’t fight it.

If every country committed to spending 0.05 per cent of GDP on researching non-carbon-emitting energy technologies, that would cost $25 billion a year, and it would do a lot more than massive carbon cuts to fight warming and save lives.

Id have to fight for an Australian role over an American actor, and I already have to do that overseas, so why would I have to do it back at home?

Democracy doesn’t begin at the top; it begins at the bottom, when flesh-and-blood human beings fight to rekindle what Arlo Guthrie calls ‘The Patriot’s Dream.

Especially today as we fight the war on terror – against an enemy that represents hatred, extremism and stands behind no flag – we need to remember the sacrifices that have gone into protecting our flag.

Giving a 10-year mandatory minimum for a second offense fist fight is not going to reduce the chance that someone will be stabbed 16 times when you are not funding any of the programs that are desperately needed to actually reduce juvenile crime.

You know they say money can’t buy happiness. Give me 50 bucks and watch me smile

It occurred to Susan that men were always waiting for something cataclysmic-love or war or a giant asteroid.