Quotes from Kaye Gibbons

Unless society came out past Flat Rock Crossroads, kept on past Booker T. High School, hung two rights, a left, turned in on Milk Farm Road and found Roland plowing a tobacco field, jerked him off the tractor, warped him and set him back up there without anybody riding by and noticing, blame can't be laid on society.

I've read two books a week for 30 years....I'm satisfied I know everything.

The man in her dream would ride up and surprise her on his horse…saying her beauty pierced such a great place in his heart.

You see if you tell yourself the same tale over and over again enough times then the tellings become separate stories and you will generally fool yourself into forgetting you started with one solitary season out of your life.

In closing, I hope everything helps show that I wouldn't be a fade-out or a person who turns to think to drink or dope when things get tough. I believe that anything is possible if you have the combination of love for what you're doing and the will to sit down and not get up until it's done….

Someone once told me that writing is an act of faith. Another person told me that forgiving is also an act of faith. That's true. I think both heal, both are arts. What a fine thing it is to do both at once.

That's all my grandfather was guilty of, fear, faith in his words, but that was a high crime in her eyes. That's all Jack was guilty of that day, but I've lived with him a good while and I believe I understand him. Sometimes it might take an afternoon or evening of being here in this kitchen alone, thinking, but I can usually come to see his reasons through his ways. And half the job of finding peace is finding understanding. Don't you believe it to be so?

You have to be so careful. You can't ever just throw words out. They have to land somewhere.

And all this time I thought I had the hardest row to hoe.

They've been married for ten years and no trace of love has rubbed off, not a trace. I wouldn't know what to do with a man like that. I wouldn't know what to do with a man who did more than show up for meals. I wonder where she found him.

I figure I made out pretty good considering the rest of my family is either dead or crazy.

I know Scarletta is getting a itch way down deep and low where a coloured boy cannot afford to reach to scratch.

mistakes aren't good or bad, they're just mistakes, and you clean them up and go on.

Like the servants, we, his children, were beneath him, and so we were left oftentimes standing with his lies in our hands like baffling presents, not knowing what we were to do with this collection of things, his words, whether they should be used or displayed or hidden like a broken toy in a corner of the nursery armoire." -- Emma Garnet on describing her father, page 2

Where is she? Not in the box. You cannot rest in a box.

And half the job of finding peace is finding understanding. Don't you believe it to be so?