Quotes from Christina Baker Kline

And I know, with the newfuond clarity of being in a relationship myself, that my own parents were never happy together, and probably never would have been, whatever the circumstances

Forgive me if I'm wrong. But are you-were you-did you come here on a train from New York about ten years ago?

Remember: eye contact," he says. "And be sure to smile." "You are such a mom." "You know what your problem is?" "That my boyfriend is acting like a mom?

She should be grateful. Without Vivian she'd be sliding down a dark path toward nowhere good . But it kind of feels nice to nurture her resentment, to foster it. It's something she can savor and control, this feeling of having been wronged by the world. That she has fulfilled her role as a thieving member of the underclass, now indentured to this genteel midwestern white lady, is too perfect for words.

Time constricts and flattens, you know. It's not evenly weighted. Certain moments linger in the mind and others disappear. The first twenty-three years of my life are the ones that shaped me, and the fact that I've lived almost seven decades since then is irrelevant.

We are headed toward the unknown, and we have no choice but to sit quietly in our hard seats and let ourselves be taken there.

Something inexorable seeds itself in the place of your origin. You can never escape the bonds of family history, no matter how far you travel.

If you're disorganized, you risk losing everything.

In Kinvara, poor as we were, and unstable, we at least had family nearby, people who knew us. We shared traditions and a way of looking at the world. We didn't know until we left how much we took those things for granted.

Something in his manner makes me want to confide things to him I've never told anyone. Even painful things, shameful things. I didn't know how badly I wanted to share them.

I have seen people at their worst, at their most desperate and selfish, and this knowledge makes me wary. So I'm 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 feel broken inside.

people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments.

Options. She can sleep with the door open, wander around freely, come and go without someone watching her every move. She hadn't realized how much of a toll the years of judgment and criticism, implied and expressed, have taken on her. It's as if she's been walking on a wire, trying to keep her balance, and now, for the first time, she is on solid ground.

And even if she loses the charms, she thinks, they'll always be a part of her. The things that matter stay with you, seep into your skin. People get tattoos to have a permanent reminder of things they love or believe or fear, but though she'll never regret the turtle, she has no need to ink her flesh again to remember the past. She had not known the markings would be etched so deep.

Girls from my graduating class come into the store brandishing solitaire diamonds like Legion of Honor medals, as if they've accomplished something significant—which I guess they think they have, though all I can see is a future of washing some man's clothes stretching ahead of them.

I'll play your fucking game. But I don't have to play by your rules.

That you are only as interesting as you are useful to someone.

Though I lived with this man for my entire life, I never really knew him. He was like a frozen bay himself, I think—an icy crust, layers deep, above roiling water.

What I couldn't see is that sometimes the healing is not in the forgetting but in the letting go. Sometimes the answer you need is to a question you don't know how to ask.

I have been so alone on this journey, cut off from my past. However hard I try, I will always feel alien and strange. And now I've stumbled on a fellow outsider, one who speaks my language without saying a word.

I have found that the biggest moments in life, the ones that change everything, usually catch you by surprise.

Nothing encumbered movement more than fear, which was often the most difficult burden to surrender.

I think of what Mamey told me long ago: there are many ways to love and be loved. Too bad it's taken most of a lifetime for me to understand what that means.

If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead.