Quotes from Christina Baker Kline

Do our natures dictate the choices we make, I wonder, or do we choose to live a certain way because of circumstances beyond our control?

Look, I don't mean to be rude, but you could never have a normal life, even if that's what you thought you wanted. You and me, we're not 'normal.

Other signs of the apocalypse proliferate. After a pop-up ad appears on her screen, Vivian announces that she plans to sign up for Netflix. She buys a digital camera on Amazon with one click. She asks Molly if she's ever seen the sneezing baby panda video on YouTube. She even joins Facebook.

I think about the destructiveness of desire: of wanting something unrealistic, of believing in the possibility of rescue. This stint in Boston only confirms my belief that there is no cure for what ails me. No matter how long I hold a stick with fluttering rags above my head, no trawler in the distance will be coming to my rescue.

mixed together—because Dina refuses to acknowledge

That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along. —MADELEINE L'ENGLE, The Arm of the Starfish

Over the years, certain stories in the history of a family take hold. They're passed from generation to generation, gaining substance and meaning along the way. You have to learn to sift through them, separating fact from conjecture, the likely from the implausible. Here is what I know: Sometimes the least believable stories are the true ones.

Do our natures dictate the choices we make, I wonder, or do we choose to live a certain way because of circumstances beyond our control? Perhaps these questions are impossible to tease apart because, like a tangle of seaweed on a rock, they are connected at the root.

I wonder, not for the first time, if shame and pride are merely two sides of the same coin.

It's a peculiar kind of dissatisfaction, a bittersweet nostalgia for a moment not yet past.

Test your limits. Learn what you can endure.

And anyway, how do you talk about losing everything?

Jack would laugh if he knew, but she's been in he system long enough to understand that it all comes down to documentation. Get your papers in order, with the right signatures and record keeping, and the charges will be dropped, money released, whatever. If you're disorganized, you risk losing everything.

A trick to play in your mind when your troubled. You think of yourself as a tree, with all the rings inside. And every ring is someone you care about, or a place you've been. You carry them with you wherever you go.

We make the beet salad by steaming the beets until soft, about thirty minutes, plunging into cold water, and removing the skins. After cutting the beets into small cubes, we toss them with a vinaigrette of orange juice, vinegar, olive oil, and shallots, adding crumbles of goat cheese and green onion, for color and taste and crunch, at the end.

That's my little secret, Christina," he says. "I am always painting myself.

I couldn't have imagined how much more there was to lose.

WHEN YOUR WORLD is small, you learn every inch of it. You can trace it in the dark; you navigate it in your sleep.

Yes, Evangeline loathed this place, but she loathed more the vanity and naivete and willful ignorance that had landed her here.

The first twenty-three years of my life are the ones that shaped me, and the fact

Her father wanted to insulate her, to shelter her from harm, and in doing so he denied her the inoculation required to survive.

You must also keep your faith in God to guide you forward if the way is not clear. Whether the journey is long or short, He will help you as long as you place your trust in Him.

I wonder, not for the first time, if shame and pride are merely two sides of the same coin. In a

I get the sense that my abandonment, and the circumstances that brought me to them, matter little to them, compared to the need I might fill in their lives. - (Niamh/Dorothy)