Unit 2: Selection Vocabulary 4

On some evenings, seated at his desk in the corner of the big empty shed, the postmaster too would call up memories of his own home, of his mother and his sister, of those for whom in his exile his heart was sad...

The postmaster, of his own accord, went on to tell her that his application for a transfer had been rejected, so he had resigned his post and was going home.

These words were kindly meant, no doubt: but inscrutable are the ways of a woman's heart!

The postmaster was dumbfounded. He had never seen Ratan like this before.

He brought out from his pocket the whole of his month's salary, retaining only a trifle for his travelling expenses.

So the next morning, when we got to the field—since it was youth football and there were weight restrictions—we had to weigh in.

It didn’t even occur to me that somebody might deliberately try to keep me off the football field.

My dad used to build all kinds of contraptions to help me lift weights.

I define myself by adversity, and how I’ve persevered.

And I’m convinced that God has put me on this earth for a reason, and that reason is to show people that it doesn’t matter what anybody else says, because people are going to doubt you regardless.

The house was bounded by a fenced industrial yard to the north and by the rushing, plunking sound of the cars on the elevated interstate to the south.

They told horror stories about White people being shot while unloading groceries from their cars. Gang initiations, they said.

Uncle Bookie looked the most like the grandfather I'd barely known, who'd died of a stroke at age fifty.

Hurricane Katrina made that impossible for several years, since it razed most of the housing in Pass Christian, and decimated what was closest to the bayou in DeLisle.

That’s a brutal list, in its immediacy and its relentlessness, and it’s a list that silences people.