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“This is survival. This is how the vessel protects the mind, how the mind protects the heart, how the heart goes on forgetting that its calling is to be undefended, that being broken is part of being whole.”
― The Light Pirate
― The Light Pirate
![Bill Bryson](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1578597522i/7._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg)
“One of the most memorably unexpected events I experienced in the course of doing this book came in a dissection room at the University of Nottingham in England when a professor and surgeon named Ben Ollivere (about whom much more in due course) gently incised and peeled back a sliver of skin about a millimeter thick from the arm of a cadaver. It was so thin as to be translucent. “That,” he said, “is where all your skin color is. That’s all that race is—a sliver of epidermis.” I mentioned this to Nina Jablonski when we met in her office in State College, Pennsylvania, soon afterward. She gave a nod of vigorous assent. “It is extraordinary how such a small facet of our composition is given so much importance,” she said. “People act as if skin color is a determinant of character when all it is is a reaction to sunlight. Biologically, there is actually no such thing as race—nothing in terms of skin color, facial features, hair type, bone structure, or anything else that is a defining quality among peoples. And yet look how many people have been enslaved or hated or lynched or deprived of fundamental rights through history because of the color of their skin.”
― The Body: A Guide for Occupants
― The Body: A Guide for Occupants
![Nadia Bolz-Weber](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1384453647i/1685874._UX200_CR0,48,200,200_.jpg)
“In my pastoral work I've started to suspect that the more someone was exposed to religious messages about controlling their desires, avoiding sexual thoughts, and not lusting in their hearts, the less likely they are to be integrated physically, emotionally, sexually, and spiritually.”
― Shameless: A Case for Not Feeling Bad About Feeling Good
― Shameless: A Case for Not Feeling Bad About Feeling Good
![Bill Bryson](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1578597522i/7._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg)
“Dying is, to coin a phrase, the last thing your body wants to do.”
― The Body: A Guide for Occupants
― The Body: A Guide for Occupants
![Peter Enns](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/authors/1409176219i/157907._UX200_CR0,0,200,200_.jpg)
“I believe that God is more interested in the who. And that means walking the walk, not just talking the talk. Better: it means walking the walk when no words are left. That is trust.”
― The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs
― The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs
Esther’s 2023 Year in Books
Take a look at Esther’s Year in Books. The good, the bad, the long, the short—it’s all here.
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