People had gone west leaving behind all sorts of trouble; what they found in California was the space and freedom to create new trouble.
Yes, my boy; yes, my girl. The tension between contraries is what makes us ourselves. We have not just one, but the other too, mixing and clashing and sparking inside us. Not just light, but dark. Not just peace, but at war. Not just innocent, but experienced.
Everything engravers do gets printed opposite. The engraver has to be able to see it both ways.
Though grafted at the same time, they had grown up to be different sizes; it always surprised James that the trees could turn out as varied as his children.
She’d had a terrible time with his brothers’ wives : seeing her with them was like watching someone pet a cat against its fur.
Yes, Mary Anning, you are different from all the rocks on the beach.
It is not easy to let someone go, even when they have said unforgivable things to you.
California is where you get to start over.
I liked sleeping in the attic. There was no Crucifixion scene hanging at the foot of the bed to trouble me. There were no paintings at all, but the clean scent of linseed oil and the musk of the earth pigments. I liked my view of the New Church, and the quiet. No one came up except him. The girls did not visit me as they sometimes had in the cellar, or secretly search through my things. i felt alone there, perched high above the noisy household, able to see it from a distance.
Life itself was far messier and didn’t end so tidily with the heroine making the right match.
What’s funny about opposites be that wet and dry both has water, boy and girl be about people, Heaven and Hell be the places you go when you die. They all has something in common. So they an’t completely different from each other the way people think. Having the one don’t mean t’other be gone.
The second he was gone the women began chattering like chickens at the sight of a fox.
Paintings may serve a spiritual purpose for Catholics, but remember too that Protestants see God everywhere, in everything. By painting everyday things – tables and chairs, bowls and pitchers, soldiers and maids – are they not celebrating God’s creation as well?” I.
Nance is funny that way. She likes women her own size – like your sister. She knows where she is with a woman like Martha. Whereas Molly – she’s so – well, so full of life, she makes Nance feel even sicker.
It’s simple, Miss Philpot. This is one of God’s early models, and He decided to give the subsequent ones smaller eyes.” I raised my eyebrows. “Do you mean God rejected it?” “I mean God wanted a better version – the crocodile we know now – and replaced it.
If redwoods are the backbone of California, oaks are of England.
They do not practise the art of conversation in quite the way the English do, but are straightforward to the point of bluntness.
Compliments in America can take an almost aggressive form, as if the speaker needs to defend her own shortcomings rather that simply to rejoice in another’s ability.
She attributed her own fine sewing to the prolonged periods of silence at Meeting; these had made her thoughts level and her hand steady, which was reflected in her even stitching.
In general, Quakers did not give gifts, as material possessions should not be given heightened status.