It's okay to play turtle for a while, as long as you don't get too fond of your shell.
Fear and bigotry don’t need explaining. They simply are, like traffic jams and taxes.
Who wants to feel everything everyone else feels all the time?
But not all scars showed, did they?
Marriage and especially the ceremony which announces it, the wedding... That is how we say to the world, 'These two are now a family, and with this joining our families are joined, too. And you had damned well better respect that.
She had of course, kept working. He liked to think she would have moved under the table to continue her task if a gun battle had broken out, but he wasn't sure.