Quotes from Christina Baker Kline

Maisie sensed it first. She wouldn't stop crying. Since she was a month old, when our mother got sick,

Dominick and James, six-year-old twins, huddled together for warmth on a pallet on the floor.

as a week. She's been spanked with a spatula, slapped across

Fit as a butcher's dog.

Vivian said she wanted to clean out her attic. But I think what she really wanted was to see what was in those boxes one last time. And remember those parts of her life.

Portage." Vivian wrinkles her nose. "It sounds like—oh, I don't know—a pie made of sausage.

only link we had to our future was a name scrawled on a piece of paper my father tucked in his shirt pocket as we boarded the ship: a man who had emigrated ten years earlier and now, according to his Kinvara relatives, owned a respectable dining establishment in New York City.

belting out the Irish national anthem—"We're children of a fighting race, / That never yet has known disgrace, / And as we march, the foe to face, / We'll chant a soldier's song"—

It was worse for Mam, who discovered on the boat she was again with child and could hardly keep any food down. But even with all of this, as I stood on the lower deck outside our dark, cramped rooms in steerage, watching the oily water churn beneath the Agnes Pauline, I felt my spirits lift. Surely, I thought, we would find a place for ourselves in America.

the tattered paper with Mark Flannery, The Irish Rose, Delancey Street,

So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason—to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?

It was pouring earlier, great sheets of rain, and now the clouds outside the window are crystal tipped, like mountain peaks in the sky, rays emanating downward like an illustration in a children's bible.

But finally we found the place—an Irish pub, as seedy as the roughest ones on the backstreets of Galway.

The landlord called our new home a railroad apartment: each room leading to the next, like railway cars.

It's a longing for things to come, possibilities unfolding before me, the charged expectation of change.

Mr. Kaminski pulled a chain hanging from the pressed-metal kitchen ceiling, and light seeped from a bulb, casting a wan glow over a scarred wooden table, a small stained sink with a faucet that ran cold water, a gas stove. In the hall, outside the apartment door, was a lavatory we shared with our neighbors—a

Despite the landlord's disapproval, the sweltering heat, the gloomy rooms, and the cacophony of strange noises, so unfamiliar to my country ears, I felt another swell of hope.

The expression of emotion does not come naturally, so you learn to fake it. To pretend. To display an empathy you don't actually feel.

Luego un patán mexicano le hizo un bombo, y mírala ahora, es criada. —Él era dominicano —murmura Molly. —Da lo mismo. Esos ilegales son todos iguales, ¿no? Molly

Stracciatella alla Romana 8 cups chicken broth, preferably homemade 6 ounces fresh spinach, cut into strips 4 eggs, plus 2 tablespoons water ½ cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese Salt and pepper Boil the stock and add spinach, cooking until wilted, about 3 minutes. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with the water; add grated cheese. Whisk the egg mixture briskly into the boiling broth, and add salt and pepper to taste, then serve.

father's drinking—did I mention that?

We don't talk about the danger -- but what I imagine is a cartoon version, bullets flying and each boy a super hero, running, invincible, through a spray of gunfire.

Las cosas que importan se quedan contigo, se filtran en tu piel. La gente se hace tatuajes para tener un recordatorio permanente de las cosas que aman o de aquellas en que creen o a las que temen, pero aunque nunca lamentará la tortuga, no tiene necesidad de poner tinta en su cuerpo otra vez para recordar el pasado.

When she finally stopped, I was only relieved, not understanding that Maisie was like a canary in a mine, warning us of danger that the rest of us could not see.