Home > Author > Rhoda Janzen
1 " When you're young, faith is often a matter of rules. What you should do and shouldn't do, that kind of thing. But as you get older, you realize that faith is really a matter of relationship - with God, with the people around you, with the members of your community. "
― Rhoda Janzen
2 " The idea is that the woman's heritage and background are just as important as the man's. Many women see taking a man's name as a gesture of symbolic oppression. It's like saying to the woman, 'Who you are as a person isn't as important as who I am. "
― Rhoda Janzen , Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home
3 " I think maybe I'd still nod and smile and have lunch with him. I think maybe I'd still go to the Noam Chomsky documentary later that evening. And maybe I'd even marry him a couple of weeks later. Is it ever really a waste of time to love someone, truly and deeply, with everything you have? "
4 " I'm not really a chicken-patty kinda girl," I said. "
5 " I would rather get a PhD than stand to reach for toilet paper. Though some readers might emphasize the similarities between the two activities. "
― Rhoda Janzen , Does This Church Make Me Look Fat?: A Mennonite Finds Faith, Meets Mr. Right, and Solves Her Lady Problems
6 " In my opinion, sexiness comes down to three things: chemistry, sense of humor, and treatment of waitstaff at restaurants. "
7 " Is it ever really a waste of time to love someone, truly and deeply, with everything you have? "
8 " I've come to believe that virtue isn’t a condition of character. It’s an elected action. It’s a choice we keep making, over and over, hoping that someday we’ll create a habit so strong it will carry us through our bouts of pettiness and meanness. "
9 " Call me old-fashioned, but whenever I see those wire-fortified ribbons, I have the secret stab of nostalgia for old-timey ribbon, the kind whose ends flop like spaniel ears. I'm suspicious of unnaturally perky ribbon. "
10 " It was after Nick had left me that I learned the lesson: its when you don't love somebody that you do notice the little things. Then you mind them. You mind them terribly. "
11 " Granny panties. White as a flag, but with no surrender. "
12 " Sometimes you can just feel a person's decency in the same way that sometimes you can intuit a lack of it. Phil had the air of a man who is fully attentively engaged Josh Hannah's first fiance had the air of a man trying not to look at his watch. Phil consistently interested himself in the lives of others Josh talked about himself. Phil looked at my sister with tenderness and humor Josh looked at her as if she were an especially persistent gnat. "
13 " Phil and Hannah had decided that Christian guilt was better than bad math "
14 " An Americentric worldview, they believed, was incompatible with Christian values on the grounds that God loved all nations equally. "
15 " What I want to measure, what I can control, is my own response to life's challenges. "
16 " It’s a little old-fashioned. The idea is that the woman’s heritage and background are just as important as the man’s. Many women see taking a man’s name as a gesture of symbolic oppression. It’s like saying to the woman, ‘Who you are as a person isn’t as important as who I am. "
17 " This was as true and sweet as ice cream in December. We each had our different priorities. If you held them lightly and used a plastic spoon they were nothing to get stuck on. "
18 " As a people, we are pale as pork chops, flavored by centuries of inbreeding and shame. "
