Karen Smith Quotes

I would have been glad if it had been the Lord's will to let one of my children live.

Biscuits are rough, potatoes are tough. I pray to God we all get enough.

Child, there's a sayin' every fishmonger has. When you buy land, you buy stones. When you buy fish, you buy bones.

There won't be separate stalls in heaven.

I don't have but two teeth, but thank the Lord they both hit together.

She reached out her arms to Blackie. The beautiful siren was calling her weary sailor safely to port.

First month honey. . .Next month pie. . .Third month. . .Get out here and work, you damn bitch, same as I.

If a rooster crows while you're thinking about a man," the fortuneteller had once told Maria, "then he's the one you'll marry.

Art is always an exchange, like love, whose giving and taking can be a complex and wounding matter, according to Michelangelo. Ali Smith, Artful

If decorum allowed, she would take tea at the hotel. Once inside, she might run into a rich northern gentleman who had ridden in this very coach. If only she could touch something colored blue for luck before entering the building! "Touch blue and your wish will come true." That, along with the rabbit's foot she always carried in her pocket, would almost ensure such a meeting.

Dr. Smith suggested that we have Louie put down tomorrow,” he said gently. I expected my brothers to get angry, to yell that nobody would ever do that to Louie, but they all began to cry instead. David Michael cried noisily. Sam and Charlie tried to hide the fact that they were crying, but I know they were. Then a lump that had been filling up my throat all afternoon, dissolved, and I began to cry, too, which made Andrew and Karen burst into tears. It didn’t matter. Even Watson was crying.

At the end of my first attempt to write a biography of Muhammad, I quoted the prescient words of the Canadian scholar Wilfred Cantwell Smith. Writing in the mid-twentieth century shortly before the Suez Crisis, he observed that a healthy, functioning Islam had for centuries helped Muslims cultivate decent values which we in the West share, because they spring from a common tradition. Some Muslims have problems with Western modernity. They have turned against the cultures of the People of the Book, and have even begun to Islamize their new hatred of these sister faiths, which were so powerfully endorsed by the Qur’an. Cantwell Smith argued that if they are to meet the challenge of the day, Muslims must learn to understand our Western traditions and institutions, because they are not going to disappear. If Islamic societies did not do this, he maintained, they would fail the test of the twentieth century. But he pointed out that Western people also have a problem: “an inability to recognize that they share the planet not with inferiors but with equals.”   Unless

In Buddhism monks recite daily the Five Remembrances, which are: I will lose my youth, my health, my dear ones and everything I hold dear, and finally lose life itself, by the very nature of my being human. These are bitter reminders that the only thing that continues is the consequences of our action. The fact that all the things we hold dear and love are transient does not mean that we should love them less but—as I do Karen and Serena—love them even more. Suffering, the Buddha said, if it does not diminish love, will transport you to the farther shore.

has a...civilized look.  Maybe because I know just beyond are highways

Black voting was viewed by many as contributing to “Negro uppityness” as much as interracial carousing and alcohol selling. Consequently, upon his election, Governor Smith spearheaded a voting law requiring literacy and property ownership, which cut almost all blacks from the rolls.

One spring day, I was away on a business trip; Karen was home with the kids. It was a warm afternoon, and she was sitting with our son Matthew at the computer in my office. The kitchen door that leads to the backyard was open. They were reviewing a homework project when they heard what sounded like fingernails scratching on the hardwood floors in the kitchen followed by a thumping gallop from our cat Sox. An instant later, a squirrel raced into the office with the cat at its heels. In a panic, Karen grabbed Matthew and the cat, and ran out of the office slamming the door behind her. Her plan was to leave the squirrel in my office and let me deal with it when I got home in a few days; the homework could wait. However, 30 minutes and two glasses of Merlot later, Karen saw the flaw in her plan. She wasn’t worried so much about sticking me with the task of removing a hungry, pissed-off squirrel from my office as she was the possibility of the squirrel shredding everything in there before I got home. Or worse, she feared the house would permanently smell of dead squirrel. There was a decent chance her scream gave it a heart attack. Luckily, the window in my office was open that afternoon. The only problem, there was a screen in the window. Karen figured if she could remove the screen, the squirrel, if it were still alive, would find its way back to the great outdoors. My office was on the first floor, so she was able to remove the screen easily from the outside. Standing in the backyard at a safe distance, she watched the open window, but no squirrel appeared. Venetian blinds were down covering the window opening. Karen thought, “If I just reach in and pull the cord on the blinds I can raise them enough for the little rodent to see his escape route.” Taking deep breaths while standing on the third rung of our stepladder, Karen thought through exactly what she had to do: raise the blinds with one hand, pull the cord with the other, lock it in place and get the hell out of there. No problem, the squirrel was no doubt cowering in the corner. Not quite. As soon as she raised the blinds, the squirrel – according to Karen who was the only witness – saw daylight and flew through the air, landing on her head. Its toes were caught in Karen’s hair as it made a desperate attempt to free itself. Karen said, “It was running in place on top of my head.” She fell off the ladder and ran screaming through the backyard with the squirrel stuck to her head. (I’m sure it was only a few seconds, but time stands still when there’s a squirrel on your head.) It eventually freed its claws, jumped off her head and ran away. Sue was the first person Karen called after she calmed down enough to speak. They discussed the situation thoroughly and agreed that shampooing several times with Head and Shoulders, rubbing the tiny scratch marks on her scalp with alcohol and drinking the rest of the bottle of Merlot were the proper steps to prevent rabies. I was her second call. Karen gave me a second-by-second recounting of the event, complete with sound effects and a graphic description of how the squirrel’s toes felt as they dug into her scalp. Then she told me the whole thing was my fault because I wasn’t home to protect the family when it happened. Apparently being away earning a living was not an acceptable excuse. She also said she learned a valuable lesson that day. “Not to leave the back door open?” I guessed. No, the lesson was that all squirrels are evil and out to get her. (She also decided that she doesn’t like “any animal related to squirrels,” whatever that means.)

cats had more emotional intelligence than many humans.

Crime in Willow Creek is mostly limited to DUIs, jaywalking, and now and then a domestic violence issue. But he dealt with more than that in Pittsburgh. He’s witnessed a seedy side of life, and that’s what colors his thoughts and his memories.

It was one of those things—until you knew a person well, you didn’t really use their name. Names had power. Names conveyed meaning.

card on the last page. It was one of my favorites, I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.

Feminism is the fight for the liberation of all women as a class from subjugation under patriarchy.

[...] Criminal behaviours of those who had legally and medically transitioned from men to trans women followed the pattern of male offending and those who had transitioned from women to trans men continued with female pattern offending. Males who had transitioned were 18 times more likely to be convicted of violent crime than females.

[...] In the space of 50 years, we started from a place of formidable feminist collective energy and action pulling together and creating new services to support women who had been subjected to men's violence. Within a couple of generations, we have come to a place where many, if not the majority, of those working in the same organisations and supporting later generations of victim-survivors of men's violence seem to have lost their political edge. What happened to the willingness or ability to stand up for women's sex-based rights and protections, to the understanding of the patriarchal context of men's violence against women?

If we accept the concept of "cis" women, we're accepting that the class of 'woman' can be mixed sex.

Another piece of research found that when women were reported to the police for abuse, which men often to as a form of attack, they (women) were arrested to a disproportionate degree given the fewer incidents where they were perpetrators. The study found that men were arrested for one in every ten incidents, whilst women were arrested for one in every three incidents.

The concept of gender equality is an oxymoron. Gender is a hierarchy. Sex is the axis of sex-based oppression and gender is the biggest tool in the oppression box.

When I talk about sex differences and reporting or domestic and sexual violence, people often suggest that the differences are exaggerated because it's such a taboo for men to report. Not only does this fail to recognise that reporting abuse is also a taboo for many women, but research has found the opposite to be true: that men overestimate their victimisation and underestimate their own violence, whereas women are more likely to overestimate their own use of violence but underestimate their victimisation. Women normalise, discount, minimise, excuse their partner's domestic and sexual violence against them, and they're more likely to find ways to make it their fault.

Transgender people should be accepted as they are, but not as the sex they are not.

Disagreeing with the beliefs of someone is not the same as saying they don't exist.

Whether or not individual men pose harm, it benefits women if all males are excluded from some spaces.

The struggles of women are not a single-issue matter. Women do not lead single-issue lives, and for the majority of women, the inequalities intersecting their lives are multiple. Neither do we need to deny the rights of others to prioritise the rights of women. We do not need to deny that males can be victims of abuse. We do not need to deny males and people with transgender identities the right to develop specialist services in order to assert the boundaries of our own. Putting women first is not hate.

[...] It is not transphobic, in my opinion, to believe that people cannot change sex, that women's oppression is based on our sex, and that gender is a hierarchy. Sex is the axis of sex-based oppression and gender is the biggest tool in the box. Feminism is ultimately optimistic and offers the hope of change and a better world.

It is not possible to have sex equality for all in a society when one's sex is the one that is for sale - a commodity or service - and the other sex is the consumer, and almost always the purveyor (pimp); consumers have rights over and above the goods and services that they buy. Legalising prostitution isn't the answer either.

People can be incredibly resistant to considering facts that don't fit with their world view and the belief that women are as violent and abusive as men is one that too many seem to be unwilling to let go of. Sex differences in intimate partner homicide rates (homicide includes killings sentenced as both murders and manslaughters) show that so-called 'sex symmetry' is a myth.

[...] The number of transgender people serving prison sentences rose from 70 in 2016, when the data was first collected, to 139 in 2018, then 163 in 2019, and finally to 197 in 2020 [...] This represents a 181% increase in 5 years. 158 (80%) were males who identified as women while 20% identified as male.

As long as men's violence against women is present in society in anything like its current prevalence, we need specialist services for women, girls and children who have been subjected to that violence. To be effective and to offer the best benefit and hope of recovery for some of the most harmed, those services must be single sex.

As Karen returned from the restroom, the gate agent explained the order of boarding: People with disabilities or in wheelchairs, people over the age of 100, people who act like they’re over the age of 100, families with children (children are two-year olds and younger, not fifteen-year olds), in-uniform military personnel, first class, business class, platinum frequent flyer members, gold members, silver members, bronze members, associate members, people who just applied for the airline’s credit card five minutes ago, group 1, groups 2 through 10 in that order, and finally, anyone too clueless to figure out how to get into one of the groups already called. We had “group 8” boarding passes. We felt smug as we pushed our way past the five remaining passengers who were lower on the boarding list than us. I don’t like being trapped in a small place, such as an airplane, with a large cross-section of humanity. I think airlines should announce before every flight, “Listen up people. We’re all sealed in here together for the next four hours, so try not to be annoying until the flight is over. Once you exit the plane, then you can whistle, hum, fart, snore, talk baby talk, take your shoes off and put on as much bad perfume as you want.” I think this would make air travel more bearable. We arrived in El Paso with enough time to pick up the rental car, have dinner (at Carlos and Mickey’s) and buy groceries for the week: peanut butter, jelly, bread, water, blue corn chips, peppermint patties, animal crackers and beer.

The trees were turning now. Yellow, russet, orange, and shades of brown formed a canopy above them as they walked through maples, sycamores, elms, and birches.

Soon an Amish gray-topped buggy came along, clamored through the covered bridge, and continued down the lane to a farm over the hill. There was something about the horse-drawn carriages of the Amish that spoke of a slower pace of life and an earlier time where the things that mattered in life were always in the forefront.

Work was one of the reasons I wasn’t paying enough attention when Sally died. I hadn’t taken parenting classes. I hadn’t had enough experience. I didn’t realize a dad has to be there as much as a mom, for all the everyday things as well as the birthday parties. My ignorance cost us our child.

had become foreign to him.  Maybe his

Harmful to Cats and Dogs. The list was broken down into two categories. Toxic to Felines: Amaryllis, Autumn Crocus, Azaleas and Rhododendrons, Bleeding Hearts, Castor Bean, Chrysanthemum, Cyclamen, English Ivy, Lilies, Oleander, Peace Lily, Spanish Thyme, Tulip and Narcissus bulbs, Yews Toxic to Canines: Castor Bean or Castor Oil Plant, Cyclamen, Dumb Cane, Hemlock, English Ivy, Mistletoe, Oleander, Thorn Apple, Yews

what to do with her.  She'd rebelled because she'd wanted their attention.  Any of their attention.  All of their

Who can or

expected—"  He inhaled a deep breath.  "We only

Karen, and so many like her, will go on that diet—even though she knows it’s counter to her eating-disorder recovery goals, and even though she knows how unlikely it is to make her feel better. She’ll follow the new plan and cut out a new round of foods, because she’s still looking for what we all seek: A way to feed ourselves that makes sense. That feels simple and right. That doesn’t make us feel guilty about everything we put into our bodies. We no longer trust ourselves to know this intuitively, and maybe some of us never did. So instead, we’re searching for something external: an expert we can trust, a set of rules to follow, a literal recipe for how to develop this basic life skill. Many people within the wellness industry are searching for the same thing. But in the meantime, they’re happy to sell us their new plan.

plane. Bill was putting gas in the left wing when he looked over at us and said, "You okay with a little turbulence?" Without hesitating I answered, "Yeah, no problem." I thought about it for a minute then asked, "How much turbulence are we talking about?" "It shouldn't be too bad." Then why did you mention it? I thought to myself. Now I was the one worried. I dug through my backpack and found my tube of ten-year-old Dramamine. Karen had a full water bottle so I swallowed a pill with a couple of long gulps. Bill asked which one of us wanted to sit up front with him. I looked at Karen and she said, "God no!" Karen climbed in the single back seat and Bill placed our backpacks next to her. Karen kept the plywood Kobuk sign at her feet. With the co-pilot seat pushed back into Karen's knees, I wriggled my way across the pilot's seat and settled in the front right seat of the plane. It was hard getting in without bumping against the controls and switches on the dashboard. I could imagine the windshield wipers flapping and the radio blaring like a high school practical joke when Bill started the engine. Or worse, that in flight he wouldn't find that one critical setting that I'd changed until it was too late and the plane was plunging to the ground. I decided to not say anything and assume he would check them before the flight like pilots are supposed to do. Besides, I'm sure he's had more clumsy passengers with bigger butts than me shoehorn themselves into the co-pilot's seat before. Bill taxied the plane slowly to one end of the pond giving us room to takeoff and allowing the engine to warm up. When Bill turned the plane toward the direction of our takeoff and gunned the engine, I was surprised at how close we were to the trees on the approaching shore. But my concern was unnecessary; by the time we reached the trees we were well above them. In an instant, we were high enough in the sky to