Quotes from Rebecca Wells

They wanted to rock, they wanted to roll, they wanted to feel the peculiarly human feeling of having a perfect night in an imperfect world.

Many people are more like the earth than we know. Maybe they have fault lines that sooner or later are going to split open under pressure.

Listen to me, Siddalee, and listen good: There is no excuse to let your looks go, no matter how poor you are. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, but honey let me tell you, ugliness will get you nowhere.

Life is short, but it is wide. Genevieve Whitman taught me that.

Sometimes I wonder if any of us are cut out for the lives we lead.

Shep claimed eating cake like that so early in the morning was a 'whore's breakfast.' The rest of them didn't care. They were happy little whores who didn't worry about saving a morsel.

As Sidda joined Vivi in staring out into the darkness of the fields, where hundreds of sunflowers grew, she thought: I will never fully know my mother, any more than I will ever know my father or Connor, or myself. I have been missing the point. The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person. The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be? What good manners can we show as we welcome ourselves and others into our hearts?

The moon loved them. Not because they were beautiful, or because they were perfect, or because they were perky, but because they were her darling daughters.

His tall, lanky body had the wrinkles of sleep, and he smelled like cotton and dreams.

Say there is no truth. Say there are only scraps that we feebly try to sew togethr.

I live in an ocean of smell…

Once the scent caught me on the street in Greenwich Village. I stopped in my tracks and looked around. Where was it coming from? A shop? The trees? A passerby? I could not tell. I only knew the smell made me cry. I stood on the sidewalk in Greenwich Village as people brushed by, and felt suddenly young and terribly open, as if I were waiting for something. I live in an ocean of smell, and the ocean is my mother.

I wish I knew then what I know now - and still had those thighs!

Sidda was tired of being vigilant, alert, sharp. She longed for porch friendship, for the sticky, hot sensation of familiar female legs thrown over hers in companionship. She pined for the girlness of it all, the unplanned, improvisational laziness. She wanted to soak the words time management out of her lexicon. She wanted to hand over, to yield, to let herself float down into the uncharted beautiful fertile musky swamp of life, where creativity and eroticism and deep intelligence dwell.

Zip it kiddo. Don't ever admit you know a thing about cooking or it'll be used against you later in life.

you do not have too many boogeymen for me. You have just the right number.

Books are living things with blood and bones, and it breaks our heart when people dissect them.

There is the truth of history, and there is the truth of what a person remembers. As {she} sat at the edge of {the lake}, memory blossoms floated unbounded, as though breathed, no words spoken. Like birds that fly across national borders, between countries at war at each other.

In the crook of the crescent moon sits the Holy Lady, with strong muscles and a merciful heart. She kicks her her splendid legs like the moon is her swing and the sky, her front porch. She waves down at Sidda like she has just spotted an old buddy.

The notes danced through the June air; Vivi could feel them dust her hair and shoulders. She could feel the notes enter her and settle deep into her bones.

True love is not a crock, but patriotism is.

The very air they breathed was almost a juice.

She leaned down and smelled the skin at Connor's shoulders right at the spots where, as Martha Graham might have said, his own wings might have been attached.

It's life, Sidda. You just climb on the beast and ride.