I Was The One Who Did Come

You Can Be Interested In A Jane Smiley Novel Whether Or Not Anyone Says A Word. She Enters Into Her Characters Thoughts With Great Understanding And Depth.

Since Her Retirement From Teaching Miss Beryl's Health Had In Many Respects Greatly Improved, Despite Her Advancing Years. An Eighth-grade Classroom Was An Excellent Place To Snag Whatever Was In The Air In The Way Of Illness. Also Depression, Which, Miss Beryl Believed, In Conjunction With Guilt, Opened The Door To Illness. Miss Beryl Didn't Know Any Teachers Who Weren't Habitually Guilty And Depressed-guilty They Hadn't Accomplished More With Their Students, Depressed That Very Little More Was Possible.

America Has Always Been A Nation Of Small Places, And As We Lose Them, We're Losing Part Of Ourselves.

That Afternoon I Came To Understand That One Of The Deepest Purposes Of Intellectual Sophistication Is To Provide Distance Between Us And Our Most Disturbing Personal Truths And Gnawing Fears.

I Told Him The Truth, That I Loved Him And Didn't Regret Anything About Our Lives Together. But Do We Ever 'tell The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth, So Help Me God' As My Father Used To Say, To Those We Love? Or Even To Ourselves? Don't Even The Best And Most Fortunate Of Lives Hint At Other Possibilities, At A Different Kind Of Sweetness And, Yes, Bitterness Too? Isn't This Why We Can't Help Feeling Cheated, Even When We Know We Haven't Been?