Christa

“Wherever it left us,
we were barely learning to live with it
when here came Flannery O'Connor and Hank Williams
to tell us that no one has ever been loved
the way everybody wants to be loved,
and that's hard. That's hard.

--last stanza of How Step by Step We Have Come to Understand”
― Miller Williams, Time and the Tilting Earth: Poems

“I had to smile at the man. I mean, you have to smile at idiots and children.”
― Jim Butcher, Fool Moon

“But life isn't hard to manage when you've nothing to lose.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

“We are not going to die."

Butters stared up at me, pale, his eyes terrified. "We're not?"

"No. And do you know why?" He shook his head. "Because Thomas is too pretty to die. And because I'm too stubborn to die." I hauled on the shirt even harder. "And most of all because tomorrow is Oktoberfest, Butters, and polka will never die.”
― Jim Butcher, Dead Beat