Quotes from Sarah Blake

How quickly the world plows us under, she thought with a pang. For two generations, maybe three, we lived on. After that, we're nothing more than a name, or—her eye fell on one of Great-Aunt Minerva's chairs standing like a sentry against the wall—a part of the furniture.

The things that remain matter. Because of them, I can render a plausible life.

She badly wanted to go on in this room in the place where she knew precisely who she was, the edges firm, the corners strong.

This, she wanted to say. This moment no one sees. That tells it all. "Listen," he said. "There is no story until we're dead, and then our children tell it. We are just living. Your mother was living. Stop looking for what's not there. Nothing happened—life happened. Reality is not a story." "So only the people with stories to tell are those on the stones?

What if a place could remember what had happened? What if a place could speak? What if that memory tripped us up in our daily lives?

America rose out of that handshake in Philadelphia, 1776. That single, simple deal. You give us your signatures to fight the British, we'll give you your slaves. That is what's at the bottom of the jar.

You're just like the rest, only kind.

Ogden Moss Milton Nov. 11, 1899–Oct. 4, 1980 Katherine Milton May 4, 1905–Sept. 10, 1988 Ogden Moss Milton Jr. March 17, 1930–Aug. 22, 1959 Evelyn Milton Pratt April 18, 1937–March 24, 2017

We want to be deceived. There is bread again. There are jobs.

Wars, plagues, names upon tombs tell us only what happened. But history lies in the cracks between

And then Frankie understood that the boy was going on alone. Perhaps there had been only one sponsor in another country for the child. There were many perhaps. But it was clear now that the mother was sending her son onward. ... She drew him to her and kissed him on one cheek and then the other cheek, so slowly, looking at every bit of his face, and then she reached and folded him to her. The train stopped with a jerk and went quiet. ...

The morning had started. Someone else was out there, threading the day into cloth.

Oh, I am ridiculous. She smiled. Absurd.

What would you think of a postmistress who chose not to deliver the mail?" I asked.

Housed within a woman, the doctor thought, were rooms of undisclosed shapes and sizes, and a woman may live a life and never open but two or three, and live within them quite happily. But there were those who twisted and turned within the windy stairwells of their selves, opening doors to rooms and peering in upon possible worlds unmatched in the exterior.