Quotes from Kim Edwards

All that sunny afternoon, traveling north and east, Caroline believed absolutely in the future. And why not? For if the worst had already happened to them in the eyes of the world, then surely, surely, it was the worst that they left behind them now.

He could hardly imagine anymore what his life would be without the weight of his hidden knowledge. He'd come to think of it as a kind of penance. It was self-destructive, he could see that, but that was the way things were. People smoked, they jumped out of airplanes, they drank too much and got into their cars and drove without seat belts.

He fished in his pocket for his keys and instead pulled out the last geode, gray and smooth, earth-shaped. He held it, warming in his palm, thinking of all mysteries the world contained: layers of stone, concealed beneath the flesh of earth and grass; these dull rocks, with their glimmering hidden hearts.

You hold me at arm's length.

It's funny how things seem different, suddenly.

I've been accused of trying too hard to rescue people

She saw herself moving through another life, an exotic, difficult, satisfying life.

There was something not quite right about her eagerness, an eerie kind of voyeurism in her need for bad news.

He had handed his daughter to Caroline Gill and that act had led him here, years later, to this girl in motion of her own, this girl who had decided yes, a brief moment of release in the back of a car, in the room of a silent house, this girl who had stood up later, adjusting her clothes, with now knowledge of how that moment was already shaping her life.

Dinosaurs drank this water, did you know that? Water moves forever in a circle; someday, little ones, your grandchildren may even drink your tears.

For this is what I have learned, in my short life: do not act out of anger. Act from love or not at all. I have seen it, how anger makes a space for what I must call evil.

It wasn't right. He knew that, but it was like falling: once you started you couldn't stop until something stopped you.

a vase full of flowers: dark red and pale pink in a cloud of baby's breath.

A fear Paul had transformed all these years, like a gifted alchemist, into anger and rebellion.

You're right, Norah, anything can happen, anytime. But what goes wrong isn't your fault. You can't spend the rest of your life tiptoeing around to try and avert disaster. It won't work. You'll just end up missing the life you have.

the Iroquois take dreams very seriously. They see them as the secret wishes of the soul--the heart's desire, so to speak. Not all dreams, maybe, but the important ones. [p.254]

I suppose I want him to be happy," she said at last. "Whatever in life makes him happy, I want him to have that. I don't care what it is, as long as he grows up to be good and true to himself.

All day she had been dreaming of the comet, its wild and fiery beauty, what it might mean, how her life might change.

Music is like you touch the pulse of the world. Music is always happening, and sometimes you get to touch it for a while, and when you do you know that everything's connected to everything else." Then

Rows and rows of books lined the shelves...full of ideas and images, worlds imagined, worlds perceived; full of fingerprints and sudden laughter and the sighs of readers...

But she had felt since childhod that her life would n ot be ordinary. A moment would come- she would know it when she saw it- and everything would change.

For this is what I have learned, in my short life: do not act out of anger. Act from love or not at all.

Caroline said easily, amazed all over again at this sudden facility she'd developed, the fluidity and ease of her lies.

her tone more disapproving than dismayed.