Evil almost always starts with small cruelties.
Will SchwalbeIt's not hard to read about death abstractly. I do find it tough when a character I love dies, of course. You can truly miss characters. Not like you miss people, but you can still miss them.
Will SchwalbeTags: life reading death characters missing-someone
I'm talking about those novels where the characters aren't really interesting and you don't care about them or anything they care about. It's those books I won't read anymore. There's too much else to read--books about people and things that matter, books about life and death.
Will SchwalbeTags: life reading books death characters
In Gilead, the narrator's friend's son describes himself not as an atheist but in "state of categorical unbelief." He says, "I don't even believe God doesn't exist, if you see what I mean." I pointed this passage out to Mom and said it closely matched my own views--I just didn't think about religion.
Will SchwalbeTags: god religion atheism believing-in-god
Mom taught me not to look away from the worst but to believe that we can all do better. She never wavered in her conviction that books are the most powerful tool in the human arsenal, that reading all kinds of books, in whatever format you choose - electronic (even though that wasn't for her) or printed, or audio - is the grandest entertainment, and also is how you take part in human conversation. Mom taught me that you can make a difference in the world and that books really do matter: they're how we know what we need to do in life, and how we tell others. Mom also showed me, over the course of two years and dozens of books and hundreds of hours in hospitals, that books can be how we get closer to each other, and stay close, even in the case of a mother and son who were very close to begin with, and even after one of them has died.
Will SchwalbeReading isn't the opposite of doing, it's the opposite of dying.
Will SchwalbeWe all have a lot more to read than we can read and a lot more to do than we can do.
Will SchwalbeMom had always taught all of us to examine decisions by reversibility--that is, to hedge our bets. When you couldn't decide between two things, she suggested you choose the one that allowed you to change course if necessary. Not the road less traveled but the road with the exit ramp.
Will SchwalbeOne of Mom's favorite passages from Gilead was: "This is an important thing, which I have told many people, and which my father told me, and which his father told him. When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, what is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation.?"...But the question from Gilead, Mom said, was always the thing you needed to ask yourself: "What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation?" It helped you remember that people aren't here for you; everyone is here for one another.
Will SchwalbeBut it takes so little to help people, and people really do help each other, even people with very little themselves. And it’s not just about second chances. Most people deserve an endless number of chances.
Will SchwalbeTags: helping-others second-chances
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