Alphareader - Danielle Binks

At Evensong one night, while Holly played her sax and Mrs. Bethel Utemeyer joined in, I saw him: Holiday, racing past a fluffy white Samoyed. He had lived to a ripe old age on Earth and slept at my father’s feet after my mother left, never wanting to let him out of his sight. He had stood with Buckley while he built his fort and had been the only one permitted on the porch while Lindsey and Samuel kissed. And in the last few years of his life, every Sunday morning, Grandma Lynn had made him a skillet-sized peanut butter pancake, which she would place flat on the floor, never tiring of watching him try to pick it up with his snout. I waited for him to sniff me out, anxious to know if here, on the other side, I would still be the little girl he had slept beside. I did not have to wait long: he was so happy to see me, he knocked me down.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

People died. Innocent people died Granda. And they were someone’s mother, father, daughter, son. Nothing can ever make that ok. And the people who took those lives, they’re just gonna walk free.

Rev Dr Jill Richardson: I got to tell a kid in church that no, intrusive thoughts are brain chemistry, not sin, and I almost cried. Y’all, there is so much pain out there. Let’s not make it worse.

Daphne ColemanPerine; I once heard a preacher say, you can’t control what bird flies over your head but you don’t let it have to build a nest in your hair. That was honestly a breakthrough for me.

It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.

'East of Eden' by John Steinbeck

The armies of the ambitious. For them, the future was like a giant oxygen mask, as if there was nothing to breathe in the present. When the present was all there was ever going to be.

'Paint it Black' by Janet Fitch

Anne Rice was an author who had a really complicated (and fascinating) relationship with fans and fandom … but she leaves behind quite the literary legacy, that helped pull a genre and monster into the modern-era.

Condolences to those who loved her, and her words.

People are going to have so many different takes on Anne Rice’s legacy … but one of my favourite odes to her is ‘What We Do In The Shadow’ opening credits and Harvey Guillen’s pure-soul Guillermo de la Cruz character cos-playing as Armand. Perfect respect.

A moment’s pause that tips it’s hat to the fact that you don’t get to ‘What We Do In The Shadows’ without ‘The Vampire Chronicles’

Vale.

The whole physical world was held together by pain, the scream in the throat and the scream in the heart. If her God was part of this torment, it's creator and sustainer, then he was a God of the strong, not of the weak.

'The Children of Men' by PD James

Sometimes you walk past a pretty girl on the street and there's something beyond beauty in her face, something warm and smart and sensual and inviting, and in the three seconds you have to look at her, you actually fall in love, and in those moments, you can actually know the taste of her kiss, the feel of her skin against yours, the sound of her laugh, how she'll look at you and make you whole. And then she's gone, and in the five seconds afterwards, you mourn her loss with more sadness than you'll ever admit to.

'How to talk to a widower' by Jonathan Tropper'