24 quotes found
“...in that dilated moment after sunset when the sky holds all the light...”
“Anything can happen. But almost always, just normal things happen and people have happy lives.”
“...do you actually think that how long a person grieves is a measure of how much they loved someone?”
“It was one thing to live in a world where death stood a distant figure, quite another to hold it in your hands.”
“It was one of the many rules in the kennel, rules that didn't always make sense, or even seem important, until some situation drew the lesson out.”
“Come morning, his memory would be of a night spent watching over them all. And each of them - dog and boy, mother and old man - would feel the same.”
“She needed to recover. His father had died in January; it was only the end of May. They needed to stick to the routine they'd established during the intervening months. in that way, their life woul...”
“That was how it was, sometimes. You put yourself in front of the thing and waited for whatever was going to happen and that was all. It scared you and it didn't matter. You stood and faced it. Ther...”
“We'll know we've got it right when they choose for themselves," he used to say. That doesn't make sense. 'That's what I thought too. I asked him what he meant, but he just shrugged. I don't think h...”
“Life was a swarm of accidents waiting in the treetops, descending upon any living thing that passed, ready to eat them alive. You swam in a river of chance and coincidence. You clung to the happies...”
“Just when normal life felt almost possible - when the world held some kind of order, meaning, even loveliness (the prismatic spray of light through an icicle; the stillness of a sunrise), some smal...”
“AlmondineTo her, the scent and the memory of him were one. Where it lay strongest, the distant past came to her as if that morning: Taking a dead sparrow from her jaws, before she knew to hide such...”
“Edgar, there's a difference between missing him and wanting nothing to change," she said. "They aren't the same things at all. And we can't do anything about either one. Things always change. Thing...”
“A person could stop a specific thing, but they couldnt stop change in general. Rivers cant run backward. Yet, he felt there must be an alternative, neither willfulness nor resignation. He couldnt p...”
“Do you think there is heaven or hell? he signed.I dont know. Not in the Christian way, if thats what you mean. I think people have a right to believe in whatever they want. I just dont.If someone c...”
“Just when normal life felt almost possible--when the world held some kind of order, meaning, even loveliness (prismatic spray of light through an icicle; the stillness of a sunrise), some small thi...”
“She had learned, in her life, that time lived inside you. You are time, you breathe time, though she hadn't understood why... Now she held inside her a cacophony of times and lately it drowned out ...”
“So a dog's value came from the training AND the breeding. And by breeding, Edgar supposed he meant both the bloodlines - the particular dogs in their ancestry - and all the information in the file ...”
“No one can say if you are that person who, given good paint, good brushes, and a fine canvas, can produce something better than the factory man. That is, and has always been, beyond the realm of sc...”
“Edgar, do you actually think that how long a person grieves is a measure of how much they loved someone? There's no rule book that says how to do this." She laughed, bitterly. "Wouldn't that be gre...”
“He had also been demonstrative and intelligent from the very beginning, his questions startlingly insightful. She would watch him absorb a new idea and wonder what effect it would have on him, beca...”
