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“stories ease the pain of living, not dying. People always think dying is going to hurt. But it does not. It’s living that hurts us.”
a map is only one way of looking at things.
But even painful things,” she says, “are often veined with blessings we can’t yet see.”
‘People don’t get lost on the outside. They get lost on the inside. Why are there no maps of that?’ ”
“You choose what defines you.
“Some people are born knowing they have to fill those places in,” Mama says. “They are born with a wound, and they know from the beginning that if they don’t find the story that belongs to them, that wound will never heal.” Mama pauses and twists her amber ring. She says, “Others take a long time to figure that out.”
It’s hard to make something twice, you know, and in just the same way.” “Maybe you can’t,” I say.
“It’s dangerous to tell the world where you’re going all the time,”
“The most important places on a map are the places we haven’t been yet.”
I don’t have dreams anymore, not real ones, not since the bomb fell on our house. The dreams I’ve got, I don’t want to call them dreams. In the dark hours between sleeping and waking, I am screaming and screaming, but nobody hears me, not even myself.
“Sometimes I feel like all the people I’ve ever met are still with me. Like they’re right around the corner and they’ll pop out any second.”
I wonder, how is God not torn up about the terrible things in the world? If he or she or they see every single one, then how is God not so sad that he can’t watch anymore? If life is one long newsreel, why does she still read the headlines?
Can a sadness be too heavy for God?
sometimes, no matter how hard you try to delay it, you have to say good-bye.
“A person can be two things at the same time,” Itto says. “The land where your parents were born will always be in you. Words survive. Borders are nothing to words and blood.”
maybe there are parts of yourself you never stop missing, once you realize you’ve lost them.
Someday, I am sure. As with everything, someday we will see what lies beyond.”
“Perhaps the story simply goes on and on. Time rises and falls like an ever-breathing lung. The road comes and goes and suffering with it. But the generations of men, some kind and some cruel, go on and on beneath the stars.”
