The Trouble with Goats and Sheep

by Joanna Cannon

“The most important thing a garden needs is the shadow of a gardener.”

It was strange how the weeding made your mind feel quiet. I had stopped worrying

Every plant can flourish, it just needs to find the right place, and sometimes, the right place isn’t always where you think it is.”

“I have a feeling you have made far more shadows than I had originally thought,”

I still hadn’t learned the power of words. How, once they have left your mouth, they have a breath and a life of their own. I had yet to realize that you no longer own them. I hadn’t learned that, once you have let them go, the words can then, in fact, become the owners of you.

“People tend to believe things just because everyone else does.”

“They don’t search for proof, they just search for approval from everyone else.”

“People believe in things without even knowing if they’re actually true,” I said. “Because if everyone believes the same thing, it makes them feel as though they belong,”

And in that moment I wondered if, sometimes, you only really need two people to believe in the same thing, to feel as though you just might belong.

This town is always a little flustered by anything outside the ordinary. It doesn’t cope well with a varied diet.”

They have stitched themselves into the person she has become, and when she stops to see who that is, she finds that the cloth from which she is cut has begun to suffocate her.

It’s the small decisions, the ones that slip themselves into your day unnoticed, the ones that wrap their weight in insignificance. These are the decisions that will bury you.

You only really need two people to believe in the same thing, to feel as though you just might belong.

“God is everywhere, Grace,” she said. “Everybody knows that.”