Quotes from Christina Baker Kline

Every person you've ever cared about, and every place you've ever loved, is one of these shells. You're the thread that ties them together," she'd said, touching Mathinna's cheek. "You carry the people and places you cherish with you. Remember that and you will never be lonely, child.

And so your personality is shaped. You know too much, and this knowledge makes you wary. You grow fearful and mistrustful. 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. And so it is that you learn how to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside.

As with Dutchy and Carmine on the train, this little cluster of women has become a kind of family to me. Like an abandoned foal that nestles against cows in the barnyard, maybe I just need to feel the warmth of belonging. And if I'm not going to find that with the Byrnes, I will find it, however partial and illusory, with the women in the sewing room.

He reaches over and touches my necklace. "You still have it. That gives me faith." "Faith in what?" "God, I suppose. No, I don't know. Survival.

easier to assume that people have it out for you than to be disappointed when they don't come through.

I did love him. But I did not love him like I loved Dutchy: beyond reason. Maybe you only get one of those in a lifetime, I don't know. But it was all right. It was enough.

It's painful to hold out hope for the things that once brought you joy. You have to find ways to make yourself forget.

Every decision I make is determined solely by the spark and limitations of my own perspective

I have come to think that's where Heaven is, a place in the memories of other where our best selves live

It is a terrible thing to find the love of your life.... You know too well what you're missing when it's gone.

All of them fused together to give the tree its solid core. Maybe humans are like that, she thought. Maybe the moments that meant something to you and the people you've loved over the years are the rings. Maybe what you thought you'd lost is still there, inside of you, giving you strength.

life hinges on small moments and seemingly trivial decisions.

I learned long ago that loss is not only probably but inevitable.

Mrs. Scatcherd raps Dutchy's knuckles several times with a long wooden ruler, though it seems to me a halfhearted penalty. He barely winces, then shakes his hands twice in the air and winks at me. Truly , there isn't much more she can do. Stripped of family and identity, fed meager rations, consigned to hard wooden seats until we are to be, as Slobbery Jack suggested, sold into slavery — our mere existence is punishment enough.

This is like telling a person who has leapt off a cliff to be careful. I am already in midair.

A lady wants to feel pretty, no matter how much money she has.

Each moment of loss, she has come to believe, contains within it the possibility of a new life. When the unimaginable happens, and your life changes irrevocably, you may find along with the pain a kind of grace. And in the place of certainty and fear—the fear of losing what you had—you are left with something startling: a depth of empathy, a quivering sensitivity to the world around you, and the unexpected blessing of gratitude for what remains.

I ... am left with the lingering feeling that the places we go in our minds to find comfort have little to do with where our bodies go.

You can live for a long time inside the shell you were born in. But one day it'll become too small." "Then what?" I ask. "Well, then you'll have to find a larger shell to live in." I consider this for a moment. "What if it's too small but you still want to live there?" She sighs. "Gracious, child, what a question. I suppose you'll either have to be brave and find a new home or you'll have to live inside a broken shell.

People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find...

That man would have chipped away at your heart bit by bit until there was nothing left. It may have been bruised, but at least it's whole.

I am acutely aware that like a slip of paper in the wind, something in his nature eludes my grasp.

To get it all done I have to dim my brain, turn it down by notches like the flat-turn knob on a gas lantern, leaving only a nub of flame.

How quickly, with a slight twist in perception, do people's strengths become flaws!)