Quotes About Connection

When Miss Larsen talks to me, she bends down and looks me in the eye. When she asks questions, she waits for my answer. She smells of lemons and vanilla. And she treats me like I'm smart. After I take a test to determine my reading

one who speaks my language without saying a word.

He llegado a pensar que eso es el cielo: un lugar en el recuerdo de otros donde pervive lo mejor de nosotros.

Well, you're not exactly effervescent now, are you?" Vivian says. "But I saw you outside earlier when Jack dropped you off, and your face was"—Vivian lifts her knobby hands, splaying her fingers—"all lit up. You were talking up a storm." "Were you spying on me?" "Of course! How else am I going to find out anything about you?

The date was in your paperwork." Miss Larsen smiles, handing me a slice of currant bread. "My landlady made this." I look at her, not sure I understand. "For me?" "I mentioned that we had a new girl, and that your birthday was coming up. She likes to bake." The bread, dense and moist, tastes like Ireland. One bite and I am back in Gram's cottage, in front of her warm Stanley range.

she knew from experience that touch and weird is preferable to pathetic and vulnerable

Cavilo sobre el papel, tratando de derramar mi corazón en la página. Pero solo se me ocurren las mismas palabras, y espero que la profundidad del sentimiento que hay tras ellas les dé peso y sustancia. «Te amo. Te echo de menos. Ten cuidado.»

You could be my daughter, you know," Mr. Byrne tells me. "Your name—Dorothy . . . we always said we'd give to our own child someday, but alas it didn't come to pass. And here you are, red hair and all.

I keep forgetting to answer to Dorothy.

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

Pushing the hair back from my face and tracing the line of my jaw with his finger, he says, "With you I'd be happy anywhere.

I puzzle over the onionskin, trying to spill my heart onto the page. But I can only come up with the same words, in the same order, and hope the depth of feeling beneath them gives them weight and substance. I love you. I miss you.

Dominick and James, six-year-old twins, huddled together for warmth on a pallet on the floor.

only link we had to our future was a name scrawled on a piece of paper my father tucked in his shirt pocket as we boarded the ship: a man who had emigrated ten years earlier and now, according to his Kinvara relatives, owned a respectable dining establishment in New York City.

the tattered paper with Mark Flannery, The Irish Rose, Delancey Street,

The landlord called our new home a railroad apartment: each room leading to the next, like railway cars.

On the evening of the third day, I can feel him looking at me. He has a funny expression on his face, like he's doing math in his head. Finally he says, "So what's that thing you got around your neck?" and it's clear what he's up to. "There's no value in it," I say. "Looks like silver," he says, peering

Every person you've ever cared about, and every place you've ever loved, is one of these shells. You're the thread that ties them together," she'd said, touching Mathinna's cheek. "You carry the people and places you cherish with you. Remember that and you will never be lonely,

I've come to think that's what heaven is—a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on.

Feeding Carmine bread soaked in milk reminds me of the Irish dish called champ I often made for Maisie and the boys—a mash of potatoes, milk, green onions (on the rare occasion when we had them), and salt. On the nights when we went to bed hungry, all of us dreamed of that champ.

Ritual is the way you carry the presence of the sacred. Ritual is the spark that must not go out.

We are each what never leaves us, what we never see the back of is the self. But what loves us is at the back, as Eurydice was escorting him out without his knowing.

Because I want every breath you take to be empty unless you're close enough to smell me. Every word you speak to be unimportant unless it's to me. Every sound you hear empty unless it's my voice. I want you to remember that whatever pleasure you have from now on, you'll have it from me. ~Rurik Wilder~

We're lucky." He slipped his hand around her waist and splayed it in the small of her back. "Most couples have only one first kiss. We'll have two.