Riveting Quotes

Union with God is not something we acquire by a technique but the grounding truth of our lives that engenders the very search for God. Because God is the ground of our being, the relationship between creature and Creator is such that, by sheer grace, separation is not possible. God does not know how to be absent. The fact that most of us experience throughout most of our lives a sense of absence or distance from God is the great illusion that we are caught up in; it is the human condition. The sense of separation from God is real, but the meeting of stillness reveals that this perceived separation does not have the last word.

This illusion of separation is generated by the mind and is sustained by the riveting of our attention to the interior soap opera, the constant chatter of the cocktail party going on in our heads. For most of us this is what normal is, and we are good at coming up with ways of coping with this perceived separation (our consumer-driven entertainment culture takes care of much of it). But some of us are not so good at coping, and so we drink ourselves into oblivion or cut or burn ourselves "so that the pain will be in a different place and on the outside."

The grace of salvation, the grace of Christian wholeness that flowers in silence, dispels this illusion of separation. For when the mind is brought to stillness, and all our strategies of acquisition have dropped, a deeper truth presents itself: we are and have always been one wit ~ Martin Laird

You heard me. Let someone else send you to your blaze of glory. You're a speck, man. You're nothing. You're not worth the bullet or the mark on my soul for taking you out."
You trying to piss me off again, Patrick?" He removed Campbell Rawson from his shoulder and held him aloft.
I tilted my wrist so the cylinder fell into my palm, shrugged. "You're a joke, Gerry. I'm just calling it like I see it."
That so?"
Absolutely." I met his hard eyes with my own. "And you'll be replaced, just like everything else, in maybe a week, tops. Some other dumb, sick shit will come along and kill some people and he'll be all over the papers, and all over Hard Copy and you'll be yesterday's news. Your fifteen minutes are up, Gerry. And they've passed without impact."
They'll remember this," Gerry said. "Believe me."
Gerry clamped back on the trigger. When he met my finger, he looked at me and then clamped down so hard that my finger broke.
I depressed the trigger on the one-shot and nothing happened.
Gerry shrieked louder, and the razor came out of my flesh, then swung back immediately, and I clenched my eyes shut and depressed the trigger frantically three times.
And Gerry's hand exploded.
And so did mine.
The razor hit the ice by my knee as I dropped the one shot and fire roared up the electrical tape and gasoline on Gerry's arm and caught the wisps of Danielle's hair.
Gerry threw his head back and opened his mouth wide and bellowed ~ Dennis Lehane

It's essential to tailor rehab to what impassions someone. The brain gradually learns by riveting its attention-through endless repetitions. ~ Diane Ackerman

A delightful, intelligent read. Jim Zirin's sparkling account of life in the Second Circuit's famed MOTHER COURT is informative, riveting, accessible, and uplifting. It would be criminal not to read this book. ~ Linda Fairstein

One of my favorite things in books is watching someone make the mistake. You know it's going to happen. You keep thinking: 'Don't do it!' But of course they're going to do it. It's riveting. You learn through them that it's okay. It's the ecstatic fall, where you watch someone make that terrible decision, and there's such pleasure in it. ~ Holly Black

Penning an advice column for the literary website The Rumpus, [Strayed] worked anonymously, using the pen name Sugar, replying to letters from readings suffering everything from loveless marriages to abusive, drug-addicted brothers to disfiguring illnesses. The result: intimate, in-depth essays that not only took the letter writer's life into account but also Strayed's. Collected in a book, they make for riveting, emotionally charged reading (translation: be prepared to bawl) that leaves you significantly wiser for the experience ... Moving ... compassionate. ~ Leigh Newman

The attacks of September 11, 2001, were spectacular, riveting, grim, costly and searing. The shock that they caused reverberated throughout the world. What happened in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania ended the lives of thousands of people and changed the lives of many more. But they did not change the world. ~ Michael Mandelbaum

Her parents, she said, has put a pinball machine inside her head when she was five years old. The red balls told her when she should laugh, the blue ones when she should be silent and keep away from other people; the green balls told her that she should start multiplying by three. Every few days a silver ball would make its way through the pins of the machine. At this point her head turned and she stared at me; I assumed she was checking to see if I was still listening. I was, of course. How could one not? The whole thing was bizarre but riveting. I asked her, What does the silver ball mean? She looked at me intently, and then everything went dead in her eyes. She stared off into space, caught up in some internal world. I never found out what the silver ball meant. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

Alexis Coe rescues a buried but extraordinarily telling episode from the 1890s that resonates in all sorts of ways with today. That in itself would be an accomplishment. But this is a book that is truly riveting, a narrative that gallops. Lizzy Borden eat your heart out. Here's a real crime of passion. Or was it? I dare you to pick this one up and try, just try to put it down. ~ Peter Orner

I saw a documentary on how ships are kept together. Riveting! ~ Stewart Francis

I think you can make perfectly good television just from people who are genuinely interested, talking to people who genuinely know - simple as it sounds, it can be riveting. ~ Paul McGann

The cousin said that Gypsy [Rose Lee] took a full fifteen minutes to peel off a single glove, and that she was so damn good at it he gladly would've given her fifteen more. So this story got me thinking, who was Gypsy Rose Lee? Who could possibly take the simple act of peeling off a glove and make it so riveting that one might be compelled to watch this for a full half-hour? So I began researching, and I came across a series of articles from the year 1940 about Gypsy in Life magazine. ~ Karen Abbott

So, anyway." Jackal's impatient voice broke through our cold standoff. "Not to interrupt this riveting family drama, but are we going to go hunting anytime soon, or are you two going to glare at each other until the sun comes up? ~ Julie Kagawa

TV stars are cool. Even if their characters are less than admirable, they come across as somehow sympathetic, maybe even neighborly. They are, after all, people you invite into your home every week. If you don't like them, you won't watch them.

Movie stars, by contrast, are hot. They have to blaze so fiercely that they fill a screen forty feet high and demand the attention of a crowded theater.

That's why very few TV stars have graduated successfully to features. It requires not only different skills but a different personality. You have to go from amiable to commanding.

Likewise, some movie stars are simply too big for television. Jack Nicholson is riveting on-screen, but you wouldn't want him in your living room week after week. The television simply couldn't contain his personality. ~ Walter Jon Williams

The riveting moral power of the Arab Spring comes from its homegrown quality. This is about Arabs overcoming fear to become agents of their own transformation and liberation. ~ Roger Cohen

Having told the truth for years as a first-rate reporter, Jason Leopold now comes completely clean about himself and also sheds light on his imperiled profession. A riveting account of just how hard the truth can be. ~ Mark Crispin Miller

The Hurt Artist is a riveting memoir by Shane Niemeyer that takes us on a raw, unedited life journey that includes the struggles of an addict trying to find peace and the joy and journey to every triathlete's promised land: Kona, Hawaii! ~ Jason Peter

Robert Zubrin's masterful study ... makes for riveting reading. a cautionary tale of what happens when powerful, unprincipled elites are not only alienated from the mass of their fellow men, but come to see them as a barrier to imagined social, evolutionary, or environmental progress. ~ Steven W. Mosher

I can tell you that as a writer and as a reader, I regard character as king. Or queen. No matter how riveting the action or interesting the plot twists, if I don't feel like I'm meeting someone who feels real, I'm not going to be compelled to read further. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

That's the business model. How quickly can they be made to grow, how tightly can they be packed, how much or little can they eat, how sick can they get without dying. This isn't animal experimentation, where you can imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating ... Why doesn't a horny person have as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to killing and eating it? It's easy to dismiss that question but hard to respond to it ... How riveting wold the sound of a tortured animal need to be to make you want to hear it that badly? ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Human love is the shadow of the Great love; its child. And of all human loves, it is romantic love which has the most riveting effect upon our soul. Ageless and perennial, it is forever finding an outlet in poetry, music, dance, story-telling, and the media. We never tire of it. It commands attention at so many turns, such is the longing for its presence in our life. It is not by accident that it has such an unfailing pull on our psyche. If we cannot connect with visible human love, we will not be able to find the invisible Love. Human love is leading us, most of us unknowingly, straight to the divinity of our own nature. And that nature leads us, in turn, to the source of life itself. ~ Donna Goddard

I read many riveting escape-and-evade accounts of airmen and of the Resistance networks organized to hide them and then send them on grueling treks across the Pyrenees to safety. But it was the people I met in France and Belgium who made the period come alive for me. They had lived it. ~ Bobbie Ann Mason

The basic problem for Lawrence was that he was lazy. He had figured out that everything was much simpler if, like Superman with his X-ray vision, you just stared through the cosmetic distractions and saw the underlying mathematical skeleton. Once you found the math in a thing, you knew everything about it, and you could manipulate it to your heart's content with nothing more than a pencil and a napkin. He saw it in the curve of the silver bars on his glockenspiel, saw it in the catenary arch of a bridge and in the capacitor-studded drum of Atanasoff and Berry's computing machine. Actually pounding on the glockenspiel, riveting the bridge together, or trying to figure out why the computing machine wasn't working were not as interesting to him. ~ Neal Stephenson

At the end of the day, I'd much rather do a piece about people in a story that I find riveting and intriguing and moving, versus really carrying some kind of heavy political agenda on my sleeve. That's not who I am. ~ Charlize Theron

For reasons no one has yet explained, the Internet is at once riveting and a great killer of concentration. ~ Joseph Epstein

Handsome people are always interesting to watch. But a handsome person in crisis is riveting. ~ Augusten Burroughs

I write because…

I write because I love the art and the magic of Literature.

I write because it keeps me safe, sane, and connected to you.

I write because it takes me to the places I want to go and those who wish to join me in the journey; may grasp my hand and my heart; in this stroll through this moment of time.

I write because when no one was there, the word was there: The word has always been and always will be the preeminent being in my universe.

I write because it allows me; to allow you to be understood and we are joined for a moment in time.

I do not write because it comes from a place of grammatical perfection; free of line breaks in perfected poetry; for my history is one of line breaks and imperfections.

I do not come to you from a place of polished and perfected; educated and critiqued.

No! I come to you from a place of raw, real, gutsy, and riveting. What I give you is raw, real, gutsy and riveting; with all of its imperfections and inconsistencies.

You have been touched, you have been curious, and you have been intrigued; you have come back looking, longing, expecting or not…

But then suddenly you were surprised; surprised that you could be moved; surprised that your preconceived ideas had been shattered by one who writes because… ~ Suzanne Steele

An inspired letter can be as riveting as a stare. It can move us to tears, spur us to action, provoke us, uplift us, touch us. Transform us. When written from the heart, letters are dreams on paper, wishes fulfilled, desires satisfied. letters can be powerful. ~ Alexandra Stoddard

I grew up with a lot of cats like that and they always were so surprising, magnetic, and electrifying. You can't be with them too long because they burn you out but the energy, the impulsivity, and the freedom connecting them to their animal energy is just so powerful to watch. It's dangerous to live like that but it's riveting to watch. ~ John Leguizamo

Rare is the book that can actually transform us into better, more fulfilled people. Having combed through the research and documented case studies all over the world, Kristof and WuDunn present the clearest view I have ever seen of the human soul. A Path Appears tells us whether we are intrinsically good, why specific ways we parent our newborns help predict their chances for success, and how we can live lives of greater significance. This book, full of rich and riveting true stories, reminds us that human greatness is all around us, and even within us, if we dare to look. ~ Ann Curry

Horse Frightened by a Lion depicts a majestic stallion in a very different situation. Stubbs painted this magnetic masterpiece to illustrate the nature of the sublime, which was one of his era's most popular philosophical concepts,and its relation to a timelessly riveting feeling: fear. The magnificent horse galloping through a vast wilderness encounters the bottom-up stimulus of a crouching predator and responds with a dramatic display of what psychologists mildly call "negative emotion." The equine superstar's arched neck, dilated eyes, and flared nostrils are in fact the very picture of overwhelming dread. The painting's subject matter reflects he philosopher Edmund Burke's widely circulated Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which asserts that because "terror" is unparalleled in commanding "astonishment," or total, single-pointed,
indeed, rapt
attention, it is "the ruling principle of the sublime. ~ Winifred Gallagher

He was seeing the full extent of her failure - in the immensity of his own indifference. The droning stream of her insults was like the sound of a distant riveting machine, a long, impotent pressure that reached nothing within him. ~ Ayn Rand

Ben Farmer brings a legend to life in Evangeline, evoking with grace and panache the travails of the Acadians in mid-eighteenth century America from Nova Scotia to New Orleans. Farmer is a wonderful storyteller, and readers won't soon forget this tale of love and fortitude. Simply riveting. ~ Keith Donohue

A riveting, exciting and thoroughly compelling tale of adventure. ~ John Grisham

Everything was fine with the Zen Lunatics, the nut wagon was too far away to hear us. But there was a wisdom in it all, as you'll see if you take a walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show; nobody talking; silence in the yards; dogs barking at you because you pass on human feet instead of on wheels. You'll see what I mean, when it begins to appear like everybody in the world is soon going to be thinking the same way and the Zen Lunatics have long joined dust, laughter on their dust lips. ~ Jack Kerouac

Herschel Grynszpan's life was enigmatic, elusive and tragic. The traces he left on the historical record are just sufficient to tantalize and baffle historians. Harlan Greene has woven from these threads a riveting novel, erotic, haunting, and profoundly moving. ~ Janette Turner Hospital

What makes Geoffrey Chaucer such compelling reading is his creation of a riveting conversation between the ideal and the everyday. ~ John Mark Reynolds

goat. His performance was riveting, bolstered as it was with red, swollen eyes, uncombed hair, trembling hands. Had he begun to rent his clothes in grief, Claudia would not have been surprised. She wondered how long he had rehearsed, or if he had at all. ~ Laura Belgrave

A scientist with a poet's command of language, Cristina Eisenberg writes with precision and passion ... takes her reader on a breathtaking, sometimes heartbreaking tour of the planet from the Gulf of Maine to the Amazonian rain forests, the tropical coral reefs to old growth forests of the Northwest as well as rivers, lakes, and wetlands. I found the wealth of information not only accessible but riveting ... Eisenberg's powerful, beautifully written book ... has the potential to open many people's eyes, minds, and hearts. ~ Elizabeth Cunningham

How would you judge an artist who mutilated animals in a gallery because it was visually arresting? How riveting would the sound of a tortured animal need to be to make you want to hear it that badly? Try to imagine any end other than taste for which it would be justifiable to do what we do to farmed animals. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Researchers could probably explain how the combination of thick black hair, riveting green eyes, and a slow, confident smile provoked some cascade of estrogen designed to fool the female mind into confusing a simple kiss with a merging of souls. ~ Samanthe Beck

If you've ever wondered what we're missing by sitting at computers in cubicles all day, follow Jessica DuLong when she loses her desk job and embarks on this unlikely but fantastic voyage. Deeply original, riveting to read, and soul-bearingly honest, "My River Chronicles" is a surprisingly infectious romance about a young woman falling in love with a muscle-y old boat. As DuLong learns to navigate her way through a man's world of tools and engines, and across the swirling currents of a temperamental river, her book also becomes a love letter to a nation. In tune with the challenges of our times, DuLong reminds us of the skills and dedication that built America, and inspires us to renew ourselves once again. ~ Trevor Corson

As we see it, the whole outlook brought about by the scientific revolution should have been
must be
a phase, only, of the evolution of consciousness. An absolutely indispensable phase, but a passing one. What is riveting it on to us and preventing us from superseding it, because it prevents us from even imaging any other kind of consciousness, is precisely this error of projecting it back into the past. ~ Owen Barfield

Your perception is riveting, Amal," he says in a bored and sarcastic tone, dropping the note down on my desk. "It's comforting to know that there are people in my class who have the maturity and intelligence to make derogatory comments about other people's external appearances."
Now what am I supposed to say to that?
"What do you have to say for yourself?"
Friggin' mind reader. ~ Randa Abdel-Fattah

In literature, plays, and cinema, substitutionary sacrifice is always the most riveting and moving plot point. In the movie The Last of the Mohicans, British major Duncan Heyward asks his Indian captors if he might die in the flames so that Cora, whom he loves, and Nathaniel can go free. When, as he is being dragged away, Duncan cries, "My compliments, sir! Take her and get out!" we are electrified by his unflinching willingness to die to save others, one of whom has been his rival. He dies with his arms bound and stretched out, as if he were on a cross. In Ernest Gordon's memoir of being a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, he recounts how at the end of a day of forced labor the guards counted the shovels, and one was apparently missing. A furious guard threatened the British POWs that unless the guilty person confessed, he would kill them all. He cocked his gun to start shooting them one by one. At that moment, one prisoner stepped forward calmly and said, "I did it." He stood quietly at attention, and "he did not open his mouth" (Isaiah 53: 7) as he was beaten to death. When they all got back to the camp and counted the shovels again, it turned out that they were all there. The man had sacrificed himself to save them all. In the first Harry Potter novel, the evil Lord Voldemort can't touch Harry without being burned. Later Dumbledore explains it to him. "Your mother died to save you. . . . Love as powerful [as that] . . . leaves its own mark. . . . [T] o have be ~ Timothy J. Keller

The Peloponnesian War turns out to be no dry chronicle of abstract cause and effect. No, it is above all an intense, riveting, and timeless story of strong and weak men, of heroes and scoundrels and innocents too, all caught in the fateful circumstances of rebellion, plague, and war that always strip away the veneer of culture and show us for what we really are. ~ Thucydides

Taking awfully long to deliver a package!" Dad said.
"Because you make him nervous!" I motioned for him to go inside.
"That should make him faster," Dad pointed out. "What is it anyway?"
"Uh."
Rose whispered, "Tell him it's the Kama Sutra book you ordered."
I yelled over my shoulder, "It's the Kama Su - " I turned to Rose. "Wait. Isn't that the - "
"Ancient text of sexual pleasure?" he nodded. "Yes. Quite riveting. I'd be happy demonstrate. My skills are legendary."
"Oh, thanks very much."
"I'll take that as a yes."
"No! ~ A&E Kirk

Like Flannery O'Connor, McCorkle's genius is to give us both philosophical speculation and a riveting narrative filled with unforgettable characters. Great writing, poignancy, humor, wisdom-all are in abundance here. Jill McCorkle is one of the South's greatest writers; she is also one of America's. ~ Ron Rash

I sat and three hours later realized I had been seized by an idea that started short but grew to wild size by day's end. The concept was so riveting I found it hard at sunset to flee the library basement and take the bus home to reality: my house, my wife, and our baby daughter. ~ Ray Bradbury

The Wikks are regular kids given a Galactic size challenge. Readers will follow Oliver, Tiffany, and twins, Mason and Austin as they trek through eerie catacombs, mysterious ruins, and creepy castles that defy imagination. One part Indiana Jones, a handful of Swiss Family Robinson, and some Intergalactic excitement, the Quest for Truth is a riveting tale of just how far mankind will go for the ultimate prize. ~ Wayne Thomas Batson

In my case, the listener is often in an automobile driving to work. You can concentrate on the road while still getting an audio message that can be riveting. ~ Bob Edwards

More riveting to me in the end than the politics of Berlin was the vast social experiment its division had become... it was possible to have freedom and plenty in the West and craft an empty life; it was possible to "have nothing" in the East and create a life of intimacy and dignity and beauty. ~ Krista Tippett

I'm convinced that Nabokov wrote his novels around words like agglutinate, siliceous, gardyloo, ophidian, triskelions. That he took an ESL course at a local night school and the teacher wrote those words on the blackboard and said, "Today's assignment is to take these words and use them in a first novel the New York Times will call 'Riveting, truly a classic for the ages. ~ Paul Beatty

The story of Bennet Omalu is a riveting story; it's just a riveting tale. I knew from the beginning if I stayed close to that kind of storytelling and focussed on the character, then the other stuff comes along with it, and the message becomes baked into the journey. ~ Peter Landesman

Somewhere along the way we've lost our convictions, and it appears that in the losing we've altogether forgotten what convictions are. For convictions have been meticulously redefined as rights run amuck in the service of self, greed mongering goals touted as the call of destiny obediently obeyed, the desire to abide by tawdry trends so as not to be ousted by favored groups, and other such horribly debilitating vices. And despite this utterly absurd rewrite (which is in fact a careless editing incessantly pawned off as embracing the most riveting legitimacy imaginable), convictions are in fact the commitment to steadfastly adhere to sound principles and proven ethics that thoughtfully build the world around us as they reshape the ugly agendas within us. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I resent almost all of the time I spend in front of the television, but I find 'The Only Way Is Essex' absolutely riveting. ~ Paul McGann

The Fall of the House of Zeus is a riveting American saga of ambition, cunning, greed, corruption, high life and low life in the land of Faulkner and Grisham. These are good ol' boys gone bad with flair, private jets, and lots of cash to carry. Curtis Wilkie, a child of the South and a reporter's reporter, is the perfect match for this wild ride. ~ Tom Brokaw

Alafair Burke's first standalone is a must read! You'll lose yourself in this riveting story of Alice Humphrey, a woman whose nightmare begins when she goes to work at her new gallery job, only to find everything gone - and a murdered man on the floor. You can't guess the plot twists that follow, as Alice's whole word turns upside down and she has to question everyone and everything she thought was real. And the ending is a shocker you'll never see coming. ~ Lisa Scottoline

UNMARKED is both gorgeous and hideous. A frightening and disturbing tale spun with great beauty. Absolutely riveting. ~ Jonathan Maberry

In general, we store away our experiences and make use of timeworn phrases - nice, ready-made, reassuring stylizations that give us a sense of colloquial normality. But in this way, either knowingly or unknowingly, we reject everything that, to be said fully, would require effort and a torturous search for words. Honest writing forces itself to find words for those parts of our experience that are hidden and silent. On one hand, a good story, or, rather, the kind of story I like best, narrates an experience - for example, friendship - following specific conventions that render it recognizable and riveting; on the other hand, it sporadically reveals the magma running beneath the pillars of convention. The fate of a story that tends toward truth by pushing stylizations to their limit depends on the extent to which the reader really wants to face up to herself. ~ Elena Ferrante

Walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the same street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show; nobody talking; silence in the yards; dogs barking at you because you pass on human feet instead of wheels. ~ Geoff Nicholson

What I've realized is that a film operates both on the intellectual and emotional levels, and if you can find a way to tell a riveting story and draw ideas out of that, it's very powerful. ~ Dinesh D'Souza

An elegantly crafted novel, "The Reluctant First Lady" clearly documents author Venita Ellick as an exceptionally accomplished writer able to skillfully weave memorable characters into a riveting story line from beginning to end. As engaging as it is entertaining, "The Reluctant First Lady" is highly recommended for both personal reading lists and community library contemporary fiction collections. ~ Midwest Book Review August 2013

The Truth about America's Silicon Valley-
Angels in the Silicon

Riveting and insightful regarding progressivism and the social upheavals living in the Silicon Valley.-

John Yoo, UC Berkeley Constitutional Lawyer, novelist, and public servant ~ Richard Theodor Kusiolek

To Americans Boris Vian has long been one of the hidden glories of French literature. In I Spit on Your Graves, he wrote an utterly untypical work, a blast from his Id that may well have killed him. Even now, with misogyny disguised as racial justice, its venom remains potent and disturbing, in equal parts appalling and riveting. It is a singular book, not for the squeamish, and not to be passed by. ~ Jim Krusoe

Economics has become as riveting as politics. ~ Tina Brown

~EDITORIAL REVIEW~
" ... Wickard will have readers on edge ..."
" ... a methodical, white-knuckled grip of the throat, the tension getting tighter."
"A leisurely paced but ultimately rewarding, riveting thriller." ~ Douglas Wickard

Jon Land writes great fiction, and Betrayal reads like the best of it. The fact that it's true makes the story all the more riveting ... A sobering indictment of our law enforcement system and one man's relentless quest to see justice done. ~ Robert Leuci

He hadn't changed since I had seen him a few years earlier. With his close-cropped black beard, angular features, and riveting gaze, Craig still looks the role of a serious scholar. He speaks in cogent sentences, never losing his train of thought, always working through an answer methodically, point by point, fact by fact. ~ Lee Strobel

BEAUTIFUL is stark, disquieting and, quite simply, riveting. Amy Reed is an author to keep on your radar. ~ Ellen Hopkins

Forty years after the greatest scandal of the American presidency, Elizabeth Drew's account in Washington Journal remains fresh and riveting, instructive and evocative. Her afterword on Nixon's post-Watergate life is equally compelling. ~ Tom Brokaw

You will stay up all night reading this brilliant and devastating novel the way you might have with a new best friend in junior high-one whose revelations thrilled and terrified you, and whose raw, hard-earned wisdom remade the way you saw the world. It evokes the genius of Angela Pneumans canonical progenitors: Flannery O'Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, Walker Percy. Lay It on My Heart is a gorgeous, riveting, and unforgettable book. ~ Julie Orringer

Don't sit back and watch other people live out your dreams ~ JoAnn Michael Young