A Fine Line https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html “Tell me, do you believe it? Really believe it? Bad and good are the same?” Five Favorites from 2025 “Loss often hides in the layers of color – what’s been scraped off, painted over.” “He climbed the stairs to his destination, Nakagyō Kokoto Clinic for the Soul, situated on the fifth floor.” “Who would change a comfortable life . . . for the unknown trials of matrimony?” “For all of us, the biggest hurdle is accepting it emotionally.” “And yet they, who passed away long ago, still exist in us, as predisposition, as burden upon our fate, as murmuring blood, and as gesture that rise up from the depths of time.” “Jane Austen invented a new voice for fiction: conversational and intimate.” “You want to eat clam chowder and lobster rolls . . . served to you by someone who calls them chowdah and lobstah.” “When your King gave me medal and diploma, two forms should have stood, one at either side of me, an old woman sinking into the infirmity of age and a young man’s ghost.” “The center cannot hold . . .” “At the core of each lay suffering; . . .We must try to see one another in this way.” About “A Fine Line” About Catherine Stover “Their stories can inform and enlighten; they should also be wake-up calls for anybody who hasn’t fully tuned in to what’s happening to trans folks in this country . . . ” “I have a pact with myself not to think about money in the morning.” “Building a new theory of American history is no small undertaking.” “That should be my epitaph: All because of my stupid childhood.” “It was fun, although admittedly difficult . . .” “Time to purge . . . impossible futures, manacled to metal desks and manicured lawns.” “An American friend of mine in New York once fumed to me about a female colleague of his who was asking to work part-time from home after having children.” “The present changes the past.” “You put all the [decoy] mallards out there, but if you’re going hunting you need something like this egret, for a confidence decoy.” “What’s before me but trails of stories, one story leading to another . . .” “Holding my breath, I pressed the blade to my left wrist and pulled it across.” “With time, thoughts thicken and become richer, connect more.” “Among the cold and hungry passengers, I wondered who was travelling without emotional anchors. Many, I thought.” “In the middle of my life – just past the middle – walking along the street with our little dog Jack on a leash . . . I came to the edge and did not know the way.” “There is only one thing I care about now, and my feet are carrying me there.” “If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.” “The ground suddenly seemed a long way down and escape far away.” “My feelings didn’t have enough space inside my body.” “I wonder about those days for Grandpa Eli, watching his son repeat his father’s worst sin.” “She had come to realize that the position of an unmarried, unattached, ageing woman is of not interest whatever to the writer of modern fiction.” “Will I ever manage to fit in?” “Why have I never opened the box? It’s complicated.” “What now?” “The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn’t conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened him.” “Pleased down to my clogs, as all bakers are when something they make is properly appreciated, I slid the coffee thermos back onto its warmer . . . “ “You need to avoid saying things like ‘Good God, Mrs. Morris, surely you realize that you daughter doesn’t have the slightest chance of getting into Princeton.’” “So walk on air against your better judgement . . .” “If a story drew us in, kept us reading, made us feel respected, how did it do that?” 10 Best Books for College Teachers in 2025 Free Tools for Writers & Teachers “I began to think about what it means to be a facilitator of learning rather than a teacher.” “Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept.” “Frightening how quickly it all falls away.” “It’s just a book that makes me miss the only person I know for sure whose love I did not have to earn.” “and then there are days when the simple act of breathing leaves you exhausted.” “Regrets? I say to myself. What regrets?”