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“And there is further testimony, so extensive and so powerful that it seems unpardonable to ignore it. Our corruptibility is not contingent. We pretend to know this but rarely examine the relevance of this knowledge to our hopes. We pretend to know that nothing is evergreen, that each source of life is eventually exhausted and each concentration of energy eventually dispersed. We pretend to know that the biological process of life itself is the source of anxiety, conflict, aggression, uncertainty, concern. We pretend to know that no consistent system of values is possible and that at every step values that we consider important become mutually exclusive when we attempt their practical application to individual cases; tragedy, the moral victory of evil, is always possible. We pretend to know that reason often hampers our ability to liberate our energies, that moments of joy are more often than not wrested from intellectual lucidity. We pretend to know that creation is a struggle of man against himself and, more often than not, against others also, that the bliss of love lies in hopeful dissatisfaction, that in our world, death is the only total unity. We pretend to know why our noble motives slide into evil results, why our will toward good emerges from pride, hatred ,vanity, envy, personal ambition. We pretend to know that most of life consists in taking flight from reality and concealing this reality from ourselves. We pretend to know that our efforts to improve the world are constrained by the narrow limits defined by our biological structure and by the pressures of the past which have molded us and which we cannot leave very far behind. All these things, which we pretend to be aware of, compose the reality of original sin---and yet it is this reality that we attempt to deny.”

“And there is Jules. You might like him the best. He is the one who takes care of us all. He is the reason we're all okay and still together. I don't think he knows we know that, but we do. Sometimes he might tell us what to do or not listen, but he would do anything for any of us. People say we're unlucky because we don't have parents. But I think they're unlucky because they don't have a brother like mine.”

“And there is my payment the rubies in your cheeks. Are you properly scandalized by your wicked behavior? If you were Catholic, you'd singe the ears of the priest you confessed to. Do you remember making me swear to repeat all those naughty actions agian, no matter what you said this morning?" Now that he brought it up, I did recall saying that. Great Betrayed by my own immorality. "God, Bones...some of that was depraved." "I'll take that as a compliment." He closed the distance between us."I love you. Don't be ashamed of anything we did, even if your prudery is on life support.”

“And there is no difference, in principle - but only in degree - between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man's ownership of himself and the products of his labor; and asserts that other men may own him, and dispose of him and his property, for their uses, and at their pleasure.”

“And there is no getting away from the fact - and this is a key point of discontent among many who are upset with the health care reform bill is it didn't go far enough. They say why isn't it in place now? Why don't I see some benefits now? All I see is the potential for losing insurance coverage, for premiums going up. That's hurting Obama.”

“And there is no use whatever, gentlemen, trying to help people who do not help themselves. You cannot push any one up a ladder unless he be willing to climb a little himself.”

“And there is quite a different sort of conversation around a fire than there is in the shadow of a beech tree.... Four dry logs have in them all the circumstance necessary to a conversation of four or five hours, with chestnuts on the plate and a jug of wine between the legs. Yes, let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.”

“And there is something great about knowing that my only job is to be as happy as I can be about my life, and feel as good as I can about myself, and to lead as full and eventful a life as I can, so that it doesn’t ever feel like I’m just waiting around for some guy to ask me out. And most importantly, it’s good for us all to remember that we don’t need to scheme and plot and beg to get someone to ask us out. We’re fantastic.”

“And there is something profoundly humbling about knowing God. I’m not talking about the trinket God or the genie-in-a-lamp God. I mean the God who invented the tree in my front yard, the beauty of my sweetheart, the taste of a blueberry, the violence of a river at flood. There are a lot of religious trends that would have us controlling God, telling us that if we do this that and the other, God will jump through our hoops like a monkey. But this other God, this real God, is awesome and strong, all-encompassing and passionate, and for reasons I will never understand, he wants to father us.”

“And there is the girl. When I first see her and her dun mare from my vantage point on the cliff road, I am struck first not by the fact that she is a girl, but by the fact that she's in the ocean. it's the dreaded second day, the day people start to die, and no one will get close to the surf. But there she is, trotting up to the knee in the water. Fearless.”

“And there is this fact of the twelve baskets: why twelve? What does it mean? Twelve is the number of the tribes of Israel, symbolically it represents all the people. And this tells us that when food is shared equally, with solidarity, nobody is devoid of the necessary, each community can meet the needs of the poorest. Human ecology and environmental ecology go hand in hand.”

“And there it was in a chestnut shell. My Christmas obsession wasn't about the holiday at all. It was about creating a space that felt like love. A magical, light-filled fantasy reflecting promise and hope and dreams we pray will come true. Not so far off from Vegas actually. Only with fewer drunk Santas. And a lot more sugar.”

“And there may be some connection, too, with the Roman Catholic Church’s somewhat flexible attitude towards sin and thus, in general, towards wrongdoing. Otherwise, how to explain that 137 years after Italy became a modern nation-state, so many people still choose simply to ignore laws they don’t like. Maybe other nationalities would be the same if in their countries, too, law enforcement were considered an optional, even by the people charged with that task.”

“And there’s all these guys who give a whole bunch of money to the people who make the laws and having them not do nothing except making it easy to get guns and even those big soldier ones like that guy who shot me and Rosa and Miss Guerrero and all the other kids. I guess those guys who give the money must hate kids or they wouldn’t do that. I didn’t think nobody didn’t like kids but boy was I wrong.”