“But pain may be a gift to us. Remember, after all, that pain is one of the ways we register in memory the things that vanish, that are taken away. We fix them in our minds forever by yearning, by pain, by crying out. Pain, the pain that seems unbearable at the time, is memory's first imprinting step, the cornerstone of the temple we erect inside us in memory of the dead. Pain is part of memory, and memory is a God-given gift.” WayMindFirstsMaySeemsPainRememberGivenMemoriesStepsForeverTakenCryTemplesYearningUnbearableRegisterCornerstonesImprinting Author:Sue Miller
“And what if we’d been utterly open? Made jokes about the first wife? What if we’d been that kind of family? Well, I would have been different, surely. But not because I knew the secret. For it wasn’t the secret—the secret that wasn’t a secret anyway—that led to the austerity in our lives. It was the austerity that led to the secret. And what I had been marked by, probably most of all, was the austerity. It had made secrets in my life too. Or silences, anyway, that became secrets. That became lies.” IfsFirstsWellsKindHas BeensMadeDifferentLyingSecretSilenceOur LivesWifeJokesWhat IfAusterity Author:Sue Miller
