Quotes About Responsibility

Standing in the heat and noise, facing the rows of bent heads, Ethan Figman willed himself to leave that long sleep in which you dream that the inhuman things that people do to one another on a distant continent have nothing to do with the likes of you.

If you want more to do," said Kim, "then do more. That's the rule of thumb in any workplace.

Men give women the power that they themselves don't want.

Everyone tended to believe everything was their fault; maybe it was just hard to imagine, when you were still fairly young, that there were some things in the world that were just not about you .

He almost thought of being a boyfriend as like being a duke or an earl; it was as if he had land to oversee now, and ribbons to cut.

The men she met all seemed to say they were "several years out of Wesleyan." Their beds were never made, or else made poorly, when she climbed into them. No one yet had the time or inclination to take care of themselves, and it was unclear when that would ever begin.

Wives tend, they hover. Their ears are twin sensitive instruments, satellites picking up the slightest scrape of dissatisfaction. Wives bring broth, we bring paper clips, we bring ourselves and our pliant, warm bodies. We know just what to say to the men who for some reason have a great deal of trouble taking consistent care of themselves or anyone else.

Boys can't seem to help but leave marks; they scatter them as carelessly as pebbles in a pond.

Everyone needs a wife; even wives need wives. Wives tend, they hover. Their ears are twin sensitive instruments, satellites picking up the slightest scrape of dissatisfaction. Wives bring broth, we bring paper clips, we bring ourselves and our pliant, warm bodies. We know just what to say to the men who for some reason have a great deal of trouble taking consistent care of themselves or anyone else.

Joe once told me he felt a little sorry for women, who only got husbands. Husbands tried to help by giving answers, being logical, stubbornly applying force as though it were a glue gun. Or else they didn't try to help at all, for they were somewhere else entirely, out walking in the world by themselves. But wives, oh wives, when they weren't being bitter or melancholy or counting the beads on their abacus of disappointment, they could take care of you with delicate and effortless ease.

I know I still cause harm, probably a ton of it no matter what I do. And it kills me, it just kills me, that maybe the best you can ever do is cause less harm. But there you have it.

And that's acceptable to you?" Faith took a second. "I always weigh it," she said. "Like with Ecuador. I'm ashamed of what happened. But those young women are free and presumably out of danger. I have to weigh that too, don't I? That's what it's about, this life. The weighing.

When you get away with something it's yours only, forever. Heavy and irremediable.

Did you ever look out in that dark and fucked-up world out there and think, how do I let my daughter out into that? And how do i stop her? And the things you can't stop because you're … because-

Because the bad things you do become part of you, literally. This is no metaphor. They become part of you on a cellular level, in the blood.

Sometimes it felt like parenting amounted to a series of questionable decisions, one after another.

It's hard, he told her, when everyone wants it so much but you're the one who has to do it.

the bad things you do become part of you, literally.

how often do you realize something's a choice when you make it?

guess you're right," the woman said. "You blame everything on that one person. You think if that one person is gone, everything will be perfect and good." She slid her sunglasses back on. "But in the end, that person is you.

The Bible was written by man to serve his own ends. Like society. Like the church. We use such things to control one another, but what right do we have to do so?

City hall was a disaster. My uncle's fault, and China Joe had the proof of it.

Choices. We all make them, sometimes more than once. Sometimes it's the choices we make over and over that define us, but more often it's the choices we don't make.

He wants to pretend this is all accidental, but for me it isn't a game. I haven't simply let it happen. I'm falling because I jumped, and not because I tripped.