Best 6 quotes in «snap quotes» category

Cash resources freed up by SNAP not only make it less likely that a household with children will fall behind on rent and utilities, but they also reduce the chances that someone in the house will skip a visit to the doctor because of the cost. Thus, SNAP not only puts food in the stomachs of hungry kids, but it also buffers families from other kinds of hardships. There is a downside to this type of substitution, though. A considerable number of families on SNAP continue to experience what the U.S. Department of Agriculture calls “food insecurity,” meaning they run out of food before the month is over. The budgets of these working-poor families are often so tight—and so far in the red—that some level of substitution is needed to avoid eviction and to keep the lights on. For many families, these concerns can outweigh the need to stave off hunger. Families who substitute in this way aren’t breaking the law, not even close. They aren’t even doing anything unethical. They are simply reallocating some of the money they had been spending on food to other uses. Yet trading SNAP for cash—the most common strategy used for survival among the families in this book—is a crime, and a serious one at that. The reason the $2-a-day poor do so anyway is that the practice of substitution doesn’t work for them. They have no cash to spend on food in the first place. Meanwhile, the need to pay the light bill, or even get the kids new socks and underwear, can seem more compelling than the need to eat in a couple of weeks’ time. What’s more, it’s easier for a family with nothing to get food from another source—such as a food pantry—than to acquire those other things from charities. This is why food stamp “trafficking,” though rare among the poor more generally, is common among the $2-a-day poor.

I feel that some people have a hard time with the truths around us, not only the sexual abuse by priests, but all bad things. I call it chosen ignorance. This modified form of ignorance is found in people who, if confronted with certain truths realize that they have to accept them and thereby acknowledge evil, and that scares them. Opening up and letting the truth in might knock them off their perceived center. It is too hard, period.

Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one.

So be careful when you bend over.

Some people were like rubber bands--willing to stretch but eager to snap back into place at the first opportunity.

That's your orgasm talking," I say. "You're not really in love with me." "You can't tell me how I feel," he says. His voice gets quiet, trails off at the end. "I could be your boyfriend.