I love 'The Sportswriter' by Richard Ford. Ford really captures for me the bittersweetness of the quietly suffering American man. It's stoic, sad, and really beautiful.

It was as if all of the happiness, all of the magic of this blissful hour had flowed together into these stirring, bittersweet tones and flowed away, becoming temporal and transitory once more.

Life at best is bittersweet.

I am forever grateful for not knowing-What would have been. WHAT WILL BE holds none of those bittersweet pangs and it is lit w joy.

to watch the first ray of light illuminate the vault of heaven, kissing a bittersweet goodbye to the majestic night; a never ending love story in which i am a mere observer, can you sense the beauty in their might?

And it means snapshots, because that's what all stories I write come down to; each is a snapshot of who I was during however many days and weeks it was written. A fictional reflection of my mind fossilized, set in paper and ink, instead of stone. Memorialized, for better or worse. This is who I was, and this, and this, and this, and that, and most times I look back and wince. I'm rarely kind to who I was. But other times, looking back is bittersweet. Sometimes, I'm even grateful to the me of then who left a snapshot for the me of now. Maybe I should let go and join those who pretend the past is past, but it's a falsehood I've never learned to spin.

The bittersweet about truth is that nothing could be more hurtful, yet nothing could be more helpful.

Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it in, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life's bittersweet route.

It was as if all of the happiness all of the magic of this blissful hour had flowed together into these stirring bittersweet tones and flowed away becoming temporal and transitory once more.