Quotes from Sarah Bird

Love makes intellectual pretzels of us all.

I shrug and smile amiably the way you do when you're in a foreign country and have no idea what anyone is saying, so you end up grinning and nodding your way into a three-way with a henna vendor and a camel.

In a lot of ways, Mom is kind of badass.

Do you like the sunset I ordered for you?

Going beyond sarcasm straight to out-and-out insult is delicious, like wriggling out of a pair of Spanx.

Our lives are spent plopped on the gluteal upholstery for eight hours a day with only imaginary friends for company, spinning lies, marinating in envy, and wondering when the Pulitzer committee is going to twig to our brilliance.

the instant she made a point of telling me I was just as good as them, I saw that the whole question was open to debate and she was cheering me on because I was on the losing team

Ahead was an ocean of rabbit brush bursting with yellow blossoms. The prairie under hoof was lavender in the dimming light.

So much is exploding inside of me that I feel like a bag of Orville Redenbacher's in the microwave. Too much has happened all at once. I stagnated for years with nothing happening, and now, all in one day, too much is happening.

My father." I don't even know what punctuation mark to put after those two words. Lots of exclamation points!!! One lonely question mark? I need a cartoon balloon with every symbol available in it. Something that stands for stunned/terrified/pissed off/excited/depressed/happy/mad.

I guess that after three straight years of my not being anything -- not emo, not Christian, not prep, not jock, not ghetto, not punk, not hipster, not skank, not prude, just a half-assed band geek -- no one can believe I'd do anything so well defined as lie. I like my new superpower.

I would like whispering with someone who is like me. But no one is. I think it is because my sizzle doesn't match anyone else's. I want something to happen so bad that it sizzles inside of me. It never stops, but it also never fits any of the choices presented.

I guess that's what my dad did. Stopped agreeing with reality. I could do it for as long as it took me to get from my classroom to the office. He managed it for sixteen years. He must have had more mental discipline than me. Or maybe it wasn't that much of an effort to pretend that I didn't exist.

I want to go to the mother, take her hand, and tell her that although she and her daughter believe that every bad choice the daughter has ever made in life is her fault, it's not. It's really, really not.

How exactly are you supposed to force your way into someone's life? Like I said, I have nothing she wants anymore. Not even, or especially not, my love.

I find it hard to hate a man who brings you exactly what you didn't even know you craved.

That is when I realize that I have the same gift he does: We can give each other back our youth.

I guess I have to thank Shupe and all that marching for something, because my butt is as springy as a bag of Gummi Bears.

I can't recall consciously deciding to trick time, but that is what has happened. Somehow Martin and I, instead of being leashed for all eternity to what happened sixteen years ago, instead of that being the huge Before and After defining my life, have been set free.

As she swallow a few more drops, I whisper to my child's namesake, "The first of untold numbers of sweet things you will taste in this life." It is my blessing.

Sheridan might of been Satan himself, still I could not take my eyes off of the man. When I separated him from his mount, though, I found I was looking at a squatty little fellow with black hair so short it looked painted on, a long body, strong, broad chest, short legs, not enough neck to hang him with, and arms so long that if his ankles itched he could scratch them without stooping. He

Speak no more of the hardships you've endured," Sheridan said. "Not with more than half a million souls, yours and ours, lying in their graves because, for the most selfish of reasons, you willful, prideful, ignorant, arrogant, traitorous Rebels would destroy the finest country our Almighty Lord ever set upon His benighted earth.

In the whole, long war, Seceshes never took one black prisoner of war. It was slavery or death if they caught you.

became el Capitán Juan Caballo and, for many years, we were happy in Coahuila. And then, once more, the betrayals began.