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he could never go to work on someone else’s farm, he did not have the stomach for that.
Well. They had all lived through it.
he understood that all that mattered in this world were his wife and his children, and he thought that people lived their whole lives not knowing this as sharply and constantly as he did.
although some of the women wept, some of them put their chins up, and looked angry, as if they refused to be made to feel bad.
maybe people were not meant to understand things here on earth.
“I don’t know what my mother was like.”
“I guess there are some things in life we don’t tell others.”
to be able to show remorse—to be able to be sorry about what we’ve done that’s hurt other people—that keeps us human.”
what he had kept from her their whole lives was, in fact, easily acceptable to her,
she couldn’t stand it she couldn’t stand it she couldn’t stand it.
Everyone, she understood, was mainly and mostly interested in themselves.
This was the skin that protected you from the world—this loving of another person you shared your life with.
That was it—the book had understood her.
oh boy did she have her own shame. And she had risen right straight out of it.
I have no business calling you—calling anyone—a piece of filth.”
“It’s okay. I’m telling you. It is all going to be okay.”
“You’re a Midwestern girl, so you say things are fine. But they may not always be fine.”
“It made me feel better, it made me feel much less alone.”
I’m the last person around here to know what people think.
“Yuh.
She touched his arm just briefly, and in the sun they sat.
Linda would have liked her own husband, whose intelligence had once impressed her so, to simply disappear.
Why should it matter when now nothing matters?
He did not know what home it was he longed for,
He had long ago stopped looking like anyone familiar.
People could surprise you. Not just their kindness, but also their sudden ability to express things the right way.
He felt he never expressed anything the right way.
That horrified him: that he loathed these people.
Dear God, forgive me if you can stand to.
It occurred to him often that many did not have echoes of pain from the silent noises he carried in his head.
Her desire seemed suddenly as large as the heavens. Show me, show me, cried her heart.
Oh God, the freedom of being loved—!
How did you ever know? You never knew anything, and anyone who thought they knew anything—well, they were in for a great big surprise.
She had never liked being angry; she didn’t know what to do with it.
“We don’t know what anything means in this whole world.
And you have always taken up so much space in my heart that it has sometimes felt to be a burden.)
I am comfortable with him. I am in love with him, and I am comfortable with him.
it was horrifying to realize that—that life had worn her out, worn her down,
she would not see all of them again and it terrified her.
But this was life! And it was messy!
She will die, this place will depress her so much.
He was used to silence, but this was not a good silence.
“It was exactly that bad, Lucy.”
it was wrong of me to come, it was wrong of me to leave, it was all wrong of me,
You got the hell out, and you’ve made a life, stay out, it’s okay.
she seemed a stronger person without her husband, even though she missed him every day.
It was probably very old-fashioned of her, but she did not like to see a grown man cry.
people absorb first and learn later, if they learn at all,
She had the gift of not saying much, just listening,
Humiliation is not to be laughed at; Dottie knew that well. Still.
