“That same night I went into the chicken coop, took my hooked knife which I used to pit peaches with, and carved her initials on the back side of my left hand … JA. Jane Addison. My first true love. The original Miss It. I was in such a fog that I forgot to cover it with a glove or something. At supper, right in front of my mother, my brother Bob said in a loud voice, “What’s that on your hand?” I pretended not to hear. I quickly switched my fork to my right hand and put my left hand under the table. “Hey, mom. Oscar cut himself,” the bastard said. “What?””

“I put my hand on the doorknob because I thought maybe her hand was on the doorknob on the other side.”

“I carry in my right hand war, and peace in my left… Here is a bloody belt and a white one. Take which you please.”

“O my uncle! by God if they put the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left on condition that I abandon this course, until God has made me victorious, or I perish therein, I would not abandon it.”

“I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.”

“I cry to you, my Lord, my rock! Do not be deaf to me, for if you are silent, I shall go down to the pit like the rest. Hear my voice raised in petition as I cry to you for help, as I raise my hands, my Lord, toward your holy of holies.”

“From '41 to '51
I was my folk's contrary son;
I bit my father's hand right through
And broke my mother's heart in two.”

“Last night I woke up with someone squeezing my hand. It was my other hand.”

“I missed you so much," she breathed.
I tilted my head back and put my hands on her shoulders. I could hardly believe this was happening. I was finally getting to touch her. To kiss her. It was all happening. "I missed you, too.”

“I was the baby of a large family, and as a youngster fresh to an infant school my mother tried to break me of lefthandedness. I always held my knife in the left hand and fork in the right. One day at dinner my mother said, ' You're not a boy; you must be girl to eat your food like that. We shall have to call you Peggy.' My elder brothers, always glad to take it out of me, carried that name to school, where the other boys seized upon it, and it has stuck to me through a life-time, though it is years since anybody was curious enough to ask how I got it.”