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I Quotes

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All I Quotes

“I have a choice: I can get all upset and self-pitying about his attitude, boo hoo, my dad doesn’t love me, isn’t proud of me, or accept that he is damaged. I decide to be calm and level-headed about it: This man is incapable of love. He is to be pitied. And I never mention my life in music again. From that moment on I only talk to him about neutral things – health, weather, history – because I understand that for some reason, that’s all he can cope with. It’s not me, it’s him who has a problem, and I really can’t use up any more time and energy on being a victim of my father’s inadequacies. I have got to get on with my life.”

“I have a completely worthless degree: a BS in Photojournalism from Boston University (BU). With this degree, I suppose I could have gotten a job teaching grade school kids how to photograph their relatives, but knowing about B&W photo processing and developing and how to shoot a picture story is good basic info that every photographer should have.”

“I have a complicated relationship with airports. A space that once held promise, the gateway to summer vacations and adventure, now makes my heart race a little faster, beat a little harder. A seemingly random red strip of tape on the ground, a dated stamp and ink pad, a place of birth forever etched on a passport, and a somber uniformed officer determine our future, our lives.... I wonder what new family is anxiously pacing back there, sleep-deprived and confused, hoping for that stamp to hit the ink, hoping to step into a new life.”

“I have a complicated spiritual history. Here's the short version: I was born into a Mass-going Roman Catholic family, but my parents left the church when I was in the fifth grade and joined a Southern Baptist church—yes, in Connecticut. I am an alumnus of Wheaton College—Billy Graham's alma mater in Illinois, not the Seven Sisters school in Massachusetts—and the summer between my junior and senior year of (Christian) high school, I spent a couple of months on a missions trip performing in whiteface as a mime-for-the-Lord on the streets of London's West End. Once I left home for Wheaton, I ended up worshiping variously (and when I could haul my lazy tuckus out of bed) at the nondenominational Bible church next to the college, a Christian hippie commune in inner-city Chicago left over from the Jesus Freak movement of the 1960s, and an artsy-fartsy suburban Episcopal parish that ended up splitting over same-sex issues. My husband of more than a decade likes to describe himself as a “collapsed Catholic,” and for more than twenty-five years, I have been a born-again Christian. Groan, I know. But there's really no better term in the current popular lexicon to describe my seminal spiritual experience. It happened in the summer of 1980 when I was about to turn ten years old. My parents had both had born-again experiences themselves about six months earlier, shortly before our family left the Catholic church—much to the shock and dismay of the rest of our extended Irish and/or Italian Catholic family—and started worshiping in a rented public grade school gymnasium with the Southern Baptists. My mother had told me all about what she'd experienced with God and how I needed to give my heart to Jesus so I could spend eternity with him in heaven and not frying in hell. I was an intellectually stubborn and precocious child, so I didn't just kneel down with her and pray the first time she told me about what was going on with her and Daddy and Jesus. If something similar was going to happen to me, it was going to happen in my own sweet time. A few months into our family's new spiritual adventure, after hearing many lectures from Mom and sitting through any number of sermons at the Baptist church—each ending with an altar call and an invitation to make Jesus the Lord of my life—I got up from bed late one Sunday night and went downstairs to the den where my mother was watching television. I couldn't sleep, which was unusual for me as a child. I was a champion snoozer. In hindsight I realize something must have been troubling my spirit. Mom went into the kitchen for a cup of tea and left me alone with the television, which she had tuned to a church service. I don't remember exactly what the preacher said in his impassioned, sweaty sermon, but I do recall three things crystal clearly: The preacher was Jimmy Swaggart; he gave an altar call, inviting the folks in the congregation in front of him and at home in TV land to pray a simple prayer asking Jesus to come into their hearts; and that I prayed that prayer then and there, alone in the den in front of the idiot box. Seriously. That is precisely how I got “saved.” Alone. Watching Jimmy Swaggart on late-night TV. I also spent a painful vacation with my family one summer at Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's Heritage USA Christian theme park in South Carolina. But that's a whole other book…”

“I have a confession," he said softly. "Oh no," I sighed. "It's not about the gloves is it?" "No," he grinned, and gave me a quick peck on the lips. "I've seriously been crushing on you for about three years." "Really?" I was genuinely surprised. His asking me out a few times never equated to a crush to me. I knew he probably liked me a little, but I didn't think he had a crush on me. "Okay, maybe more than crushing. I'm pretty sure I've had some pretty strong feelings for you for a long time.”

“I have a confession to make. The love affair of my life has been with the Greek language. I have now reached the age when it has occurred to me that I may have read some books for the last time. I suddenly thought that there are books I cannot bear not to read again before I die. One that stands out a mile is Homer's Iliad.”