Quotes from Gioia Diliberto

Often, when I sewed, I would slip into a meditative state, almost as if I'd become one with the fabric and thread. At these times, I felt a kind of release that was almost like happiness.

Hadley to play the role of passive partner to his ambitions, but

After she found out Aurelie was a Negro, Mama became obsessed with the color of my skin, as if Aurelie's hidden blackness had been contagious and I might have caught a touch of it. Whenever she saw me, she stared at me with furrowed brow and complained that I was losing my bloom. To protect me from the sun, she gave me a parasol to carry when I went out with her, and a straw hat to wear in the convent garden. Still, she worried.

One thing I've learned over the past thirty years is to not anticipate the future - life has a way of turning out quite differently than you've planned. Those who have a cool attitude to the world, an emotional remoteness from the twists and turns of fate, are lucky. Accepting life's unpredictability, I've observed, is the best antidote to despair.

As the ship pulled into the slip, the familiar screech of the steam whistle brought forth a flood of memories. A terrible sense of loss came over me, and I thought of Parlange with a stab of longing. I began to wish I had never left this country of magnolias and Spanish moss, of languid days and soft, warm nights. There's something to be said for staying where you were born and placed by God.