Quotes from Christina Baker Kline

What I couldn't see is that sometimes the healing is not in the forgetting but in the letting go.

Puedes aguantarlo —dice el chico—. O puedes huir. O quizá tendrás suerte y serás feliz para siempre. Solo el buen Dios sabe lo que va a ocurrir, pero no va a contarlo.

A man whose mother won't let him lift a finger is ruined for a wife." The

That's not true! Turtles mean something very specific in my culture." "Oh yeah, warrior princess?" he says. "Like what?" "Turtles carry their homes on their backs." Running her finger over the tattoo, she tells him what her dad told her: "They're exposed and hidden at the same time. They're a symbol of strength and perseverance.

Now and then I leaf through the small blue volume of Emily Dickinson poems that my teacher, Mrs. Crowley, pressed into my hand. I remember her words to me when I left school: Your mind will be your comfort. It is, sometimes. And sometimes it isn't.

Upright and do right makes all right.

This isn't bickering. This is classic mother-daughter communications. I've been reading up on it.

I believe in ghosts. They're the ones who haunt us, the ones who have left us behind. Many times in my life I have felt them around me, observing, witnessing, when no one in the living world knew or cared what happened.

Fanny gives me a long hug. She holds my face in her small cold hands. "You are a good girl, Niamh," she says. "Don't let anybody tell you different.

So I am learning to pretend, to smile and nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I am broken inside

We took away their country and their means of support. It was for this and against this that they made war. Could anyone expect less?

I am the only child in a room full of women and am immediately at ease.

The truth is, even if you make a pact with yourself that you're not looking and don't care, a piece of you is always waiting for love to happen.

When Miss Larsen talks to me, she bends down and looks me in the eye. When she asks questions, she waits for my answer. She smells of lemons and vanilla. And she treats me like I'm smart. After I take a test to determine my reading

one who speaks my language without saying a word.

Maybe, I think, someone here will want me. Maybe I'll have a life I've never dared to imagine, in a bright, snug house where there is plenty to eat—warm cake and milky tea with as much sugar as I please. But I am quaking as I make my way up the stairs to the stage.

There was never a cataclysmic moment in which things might have been, however briefly, etched in relief against memory, against things to come—a moment which, by its sheer magnitude, defined her history and her future. Instead, Kathryn thinks, she has disintegrated slowly over a number of years.

It's all part of Dina's unwavering message: Be grateful. Dress like a normal person. Don't have opinions. Eat the food that's put in front of you. Molly

Mr. Grote shows me how he grows wild rice in the stream and collects the seeds. The rice is nutty and brown. He plants the seeds after harvest in late summer for the crop the following year. It's an annual plant, he explains, which means that it dies in the autumn.

He llegado a pensar que eso es el cielo: un lugar en el recuerdo de otros donde pervive lo mejor de nosotros.

made it through this year because I had to, because I had no options. But now that I've experienced comfort and safety, how can I go back? These thoughts take me to the edge of despair, so I will myself—I force myself—not to have them.

be totaled; we can't afford a new one.

Not exactly shy. I was—quiet." "Circumspect," Vivian says. "Watchful." Molly turns these words over in her mind. Circumspect? Watchful? Is she?

Turtles carry their homes on their backs They're exposed and hidden at the same time. They're a symbol of strength and perseverance