Then I understood that when someone begins to tell you her story, you are entwined together. Perhaps even more so if the ending hasn’t been divulged. It was exactly like dreaming the same dream, then waking too soon and never finding out what had happened.
The truth frightens people because it isn’t stable. It shifts every day. If you’d prefer to remain in the dark, I would understand.
On some nights it was best to remember the past, and not shut it in a drawer. Three hundred years ago people believed in the devil. They believed if an incident could not be explained, then the cause was something wicked, and that cause was often a woman who was said to be a witch. Women who did as they pleased, women with property, women.
People said love was the antidote to hate, that it could mend what was most broken, and give hope in the most hopeless of times.
Some people know the exact moment when they’ve lost everything. They can look back and see it plain as day and for the life of them they can’t understand why they didn’t spot the situation as it was happening.
He carries books everywhere he goes so he won’t have to be bored by people.
My father told us that our people had been slaves in the desert and because God had seen fit to set us free, none among us should ever own another man. It had been written that every man belonged to God and no one else. But did women belong to God or to the men of their family? They could not own property or businesses; only their husbands could have that honor.
She thinks of the way angels arrive, when you lease expect them, when the road is dark, when you’re bleeding and alone and hopeless, when you’re sleeping in a basement, convinced that no one knows you’re there.
If every life is a river, then it’s little wonder that we do not even notice the changes that occur until we are far out in the darkest sea.
All of the quarters in his hand were tarnished. He had no idea that the silver in a man’s pockets always turns black if he kisses a witch.
But children can tell when love has been lost, they know when silence means peace and when it’s a sign of despair.
That was how evil spoke. It made its own corrupt sense; it swore that the good were evil, and that evil had come to save mankind. It brought up ancient fears and scattered them on the street like pearls.
Let her wake as when she close her eyes. That was all Jenny asked for. That was all she begged for on this March night that was perfectly equal to the day, unique in all the season. Let her be the same sweet girl, unburdened by gifts or sorrow.
Things without all remedy should be without regard. But what you can cure, do so willingly.
Shelby is brutally honest. That’s why Maravelle likes her. Maravelle is brutally honest too. You can’t have many friends if you act that way, but you can depend on the ones you have.
What is meant to be is bound to happen, whether or not you approve.
I thought about how it was impossible to forget, no matter how hard anyone might try.
He realized how little he knew of this world, but he knew this: If you could love someone, you possessed a soul.
I had heard it said that Malachi wrote so beautifully the angels came to watch, for words were the first thing God created out of the silence and were still the most beautiful of His creations.
She wondered if dreamers knew they were in a dream while it was happening, or if they had no idea that everything around them was purely imagined until the dream had gone.