Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling.

It took courage to let things fall apart so beautifully.

To start with, look at all the books.

What if you had faith and performed good works, what if you died and went to heaven, and what if all the people you met there were people you didn't like?

There are some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things.

All sixteen mentioned her jutting ribs, the insubstantiality of her thighs, and one, who went up to the roof with Lux during a warm winter rain, told us how the basins of her collarbones collected water.

Is there anything as incredible as the love story of your own parents? Anything as hard to grasp as the fact that those two over-the-hill players, permanently on the disabled list, were once in the starting lineup? It's impossible to imagine my father, who in my experience was aroused mainly by the lowering of interest rates, suffering the acute, adolescent passions of the flesh.