Quotes from Jodi Lynn Anderson

There upon the water was a large ship, a skeleton against the sky, collapsed and flailing into the rocks close to shore, broken apart and drowning. The scene was all deep blues and grays and whites and the wild waves lifting it all like deep gasping breaths.

She had the blissful confidence of someone who had never been put in a pot of turkey broth to die.

Pauline let out a loud groan. "Everybody thinks everybody is the killer. The lady at the 7-Eleven says it's that guy Sam from the Gill Creek Maritime Museum, because he has sinister eyebrows. I think it's Liam." Liam stared into the fire. "I did it with s'more sticks.

he just seemed—not so much like a dad but like any person who didn't have things figured out. Maybe the world is a mystery to everyone, even the smartest people or the oldest people, even

I'm not myself," she offered, guilty. She softened around Tik Tok, and when she did she was, for those rare moments, girlish. He smiled. "You can never say that. You're just a piece of yourself right now that you don't like.

I can't take another parade where everything centers on the dead and we all act as though we may as well be dead too, even though we're not.

So many stars are popping out above us it seems you could almost dip your fingers up there and come out with a handful of diamonds.

Books are the way to stretch out people's souls, and I won't have children with small souls.

Their gods were back. Tiger Lily had Called them. And the Englanders were doomed.

except for Aunt Fire, who was never self-aware enough to feel awkward / but you're a girl, someday you'll want to be a prisoner to someone other than yourself

The only thing Birdie was ever interested in was home. There was nothing Birdie loved more than to curl up in her window seat and watch the orchard. She knew what animals burrowed where, and what flowers bloomed when, and what trees produced the best fruit. She listened to the farm's rhythms through the screen like the beat of the heart of someone she loved.

She gave Honey Babe and Majestic, each named after a breed of peach, a caramel-drenched Girl Scout Samoa, then polished off the rest of the box herself.

The orchard smelled thick: Scents of mud, buds, insects, and early-blooming flowers overlapped one another. Murphy had spent all her life breathing the aroma of fry grease and parking lot weeds. Squirrels darted up and down the trees, and rabbits and the occasional groundhog watched Murphy work, reminding her that the orchard was the world to them, that they'd never seen Taco Bell and would never be roadkill. It was actually comforting. It was still earth, but without the crap.

I wonder that if you keep growing and changing like you're supposed to, if you always end up embarrassed about how stupid you used to be. Every year I realize how dumb I was the year before.

The quartz rocks stared at her as if they, too, wanted to go wherever she was headed. Once she was dressed she pulled the smallest one off the shelf and let it hitch a ride in her in her pocket, for luck.

Compared to northern woods, which Leeda had seen on a trip up the Hudson River Valley, the Georgia forest felt primeval. Northern trees seemed picturesque and petite to Leeda, their leaves small in soft, bright greens. Georgia forests were loaded with tall, drooping trees covered in kudzu and smothered in deep greens that seemed like they could swallow someone up. Leeda had never noticed it before.

Briery Swamp slept. And May Ellen Bird, only a baby after all, who did not know the strange history of her town or even the name of it yet, was blissfully unaware that it slept with one eye open.

Lily?" she whispered. Lily didn't move. "Can I tell you something?" Lilly breathed deeply, clearly asleep. "I think all my life my heart's been broken," Adri whispered, "and I didn't even notice. And I don't even know by what.

Boys always stared at Leeda, but they stared at Murphy harder because Leeda looked fine like china, but Murphy looked like the world's most decadent banana split. Boys were scared of both of them. Scared of Leeda because she looked too cool to touch and scared of Murphy because they were afraid she might bite them.

The Undertaker frowned again. Her eyes flashed through scenes too quickly. for May to make out. "Your future profile is very confusing. I see great fear. You fear too many things. You even fear yourself. Why?" May stared blankly. "Oh yes. You don't believe in your heart. You doubt yourself. It's a great failing." The Undertaker gazed at her solemnly. " but there's also great courage.

She looked at Murphy, whose crazy brown hair leapt out of her cheap wool hat like snakes in a trick can of nuts. Then she winked at Judge Abbott as if they were in on some private joke. "Murphy, you should come in for a cut before your interviews start." Murphy squinted at Lucretia with exaggerated concern. "Do they do waxing? It looks like your mustache is growing back.

No one wants to disappear. Words pin things down and make them real, and they last so much longer than we do.

It's shocking, isn't it, that a kiss could have led to something so big and violent and full of light as a human being? It makes me dizzy just to think of all the things that start that way. Whole families, whole countries, whole worlds. Isn't it strange how a whole life can begin with a little spark?

That night, a cold breeze swept into Bridgewater. The leaves went fluttering like butterflies, and Judge Abbott began to have what he later called "the orchard dreams." Every night far into the following year, he dreamed of Jodee McGowen reclining nude by the Smoaky Lake, like she was Eve lying in a cluster of reeds in the oldest garden in the world.