"To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know."
"Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet."
"Listen: being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different though. You could say the view is larger."
"Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or paused at least to strike a glancing blow with his sky-blue mouth as he passed."
"A territory is only possessed for a moment in time."
"If the Lord hasn't got a boyfriend lined up for me to marry, that's his business."
"There is a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it's true, but you haven't told anyone yet."
"Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember."
"a single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into uniform grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous queen. and, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. this forest eats itself and lives forever."
"That would be Axelroot all over, to turn up with an extra wife or two claiming that's how they do it here. Maybe he's been in Africa so long he's forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it's called Monotony."
"You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next."
"I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room."
"While we watched without comprehension, she moved away to where none of us wanted to follow. Ruth May shrank back through the narrow passage between this brief fabric of light and all the rest of what there is for us: the long waiting. Now she will wait the rest of the time. It will be exactly as long as the time that passed before she was born."
"Mother, you can still hold hold on but forgive, forgive and give for long as long as we both shall live, I forgive you, Mother."
"Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember. Think of the vine that curls from the small square plot that was once my heart. That is the only marker you need. Move on. Walk forward into the light."
"The substance of grief is not imaginary. It's as real as rope or the absence of air, and like both those things it can kill."
"...I stir in bed and the memories rise out of me like a buzz of flies from a carcass. I crave to be rid of them..."
"It lasted just a moment, whatever that is. One held breath? An ant's afternoon? It was brief, I can promise that much, for although it's been many years now since my children ruled my life, a mother recalls the measure of the silences."
"Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization."
"That is surely childhood's end, when you look at a thing like a rabbit needing skinned and have to say: "Nobody else is going to do this."
"Move on. Walk forward into the light."
"Forgive me, O Heavenly Father, according to the multitude of Thy mercies. I have lusted in my heart to break a man's skull and scatter the stench of his brains across several people's back yards."
"Like kids who only ever get socks for Christmas, but still believe with all their hearts in Santa."
"Like many human beings, he took the least sign of conversation as his cue to make noise."
"You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own."