Quotes from Christina Baker Kline

It feels as if my life is moving forward at two separate speeds, one at the usual pace, with its predictable rhythms and familiar inhabitants, and the other rushing ahead, a blur of color and sound and sensation. It's clear to me now that for twenty years I have gone through the motions of each day like a dumb animal, neither daring to hope for a different kind of life nor even knowing enough to desire one.

The most important qualities a human can possess are an iron will and a persevering spirit," Mamey

This is why we can't leave the making of laws to men. They result in travesties of injustice that unfairly burden the poor. And women. Those high and mighty aristocrats, in their black robes and powdered wigs—they have no idea.

think, again, of my mother opening her front door to a Swedish sailor, the stuff of fairy tales: Rapunzel letting down her hair, Cinderella sliding her foot into the glass slipper, Sleeping Beauty awaiting a kiss. All were given one chance to step into a happily ever after—or at least it must've seemed that way. But was it the prince who attracted them, or merely the opportunity for escape?

If you really want to know me, I said, we'll have to start with the witches.

that the quickest relief will come in forgetting.

All were given one chance to step into a happily ever after- or at least it must have seemed that way. But was it the prince who attracted them, or merely the opportunity to escape?

You're not shy. You just like who you like.

I'd say ye can't know what code ye live by until it's tested.

the people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments. They're with us in the grocery store, as we turn a corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles.

cuando dice que no pasa nada, lo que quiere decir es que sabe que puede sobrevivir con lo mínimo.

She is so white-hot furious she can barely see. She stokes the fire of her hatred, feeding it tidbits about bigoted Dina and spineless mushmouth Ralph, because she knows that just beyond the rage is a sorrow so enervating it could render her immobile. She needs to keep moving, flickering around the room. She needs o fill her bags and get the hell out of here.

How did I go from being the maiden in a fairy tale to a wretched old maids so quickly? It happened almost without my realizing it...

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

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. Those years have nothing to do with the questions you ask.

Richard knows a bar that's open until two and they go off in search of it, the two girls tottering on their heels and swaying against the men, who seem all too happy to support them.

Dusk softens the sharp points of trees outside my window; the sky slowly darkens, then blackens around an orb of moon. Hours later, a faint blue tinge yields to the soft pastels of dawn, and soon enough sun is streaming in, the stop-start rhythm of the train making it all feel like still photography, thousands of images that taken together create a scene in motion.

What she wants most—what she truly yearns for—is what any of us want: to be seen.

when she thought her heart might pulverize like a shell into sand, I will find a way to keep going, no matter what happens.

The house must be a sanctuary.

Some memories are realities and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again." Maybe so, I think. Maybe my memories of sweeter times are vivid enough, and present enough, to overcome the disappointments that followed. And to sustain me through the rest.

The time wasted, the energy squandered on meaningless possessions, the compromises...

A store-bought trinket with no history, no story. I knew, deep down, when he gave it to me that he didn't understand anything about me.

I read once that the act of observing changes the nature of what is observed.