“A fat little kid doing magic in front of a stand-up mirror. 'Hey, kiddo, that's a good one,' his father could've said, but for reasons unknown, reasons mysterious, the words never got spoken. He had wanted to be loved. And to be loved he had practiced deception. He had hidden the bad things. He had tricked up his own life. Only for love. Only to be loved. (pp. 242-243)”
In the Lake of The Woods (1994)
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Tim O'Brien 25
American novelist 1946Related quotes

“and taught him the only thing he had to learn about love: that nobody teaches life anything.”
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Book II, Chapter 4, "The Perfect Penitent"
Mere Christianity (1952)
Context: He [God] lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another. When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it.

Horace Walpole Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Second (1847) vol. 1, p. 180
About George II