The Book of Flora (The Road to Nowhere, #3)

by Meg Elison

She was the one who waited through the years for a child to be born, never letting her tools go rusty.

And there is one thing I know is true in this world: only what is remembered survives. Only what is written has a chance in the future. People forget. Rivers rise. Stories and songs are snuffed out every time some town takes a fever or loses to a man with a little power. Destruction is common. Creation is rare.

I am not going to live my death until it comes for me, not even in my imagination.

a crop that is grown for anything but food or clothing is a luxury, and luxury does not exist without slavery.

“That is how a good slave behaves,” he said to her while looking at me. “Anticipating my needs and working to meet them.”

Every life is a tragedy in progress, and I certainly knew no better.

Every Mother I’ve ever met says they didn’t understand their own Mother until they had a child of their own.

Can you ever really be free if you need somebody?

We have to make this choice every day, because that’s how we decide who we are. Because the choosing never ends. The work never ends. I know that now. Nothing is settled and nothing is won. The Lion won’t stay dead, because men like him always rise. We don’t stay free because of something we did once. We stay free because we fight our way free every day.

That was the moment when I realized that every new death in my life was like a new link in an old chain. They connect, and you run your hands over all the ones that come before it. It is never new. It is never just one death.

And isn’t escape always like that? Isn’t it always something you carry on your body, something that makes it impossible to pretend it wasn’t real?

What do you call it when you wish you could take someone else’s problem? Not only to help them, but to help yourself. I don’t think there is such a word.

Don’t give up who you are for a soft bed.”

It’s not just women who have to worry. It’s anyone who isn’t a man.”

Can a thought do so much? It must. Thoughts do everything, in the end.

This is the work that women do. We keep the fire of civilization burning, by collecting and protecting stories. It’s what we’ve always done.”

I used to think that the losses in my life would slow down or maybe cease, that I wouldn’t always be mourning and saying goodbye. But the older I get, the more constant that state becomes.

The young have no idea the kind of pain and degradation that await. It’s just as well. It would be hard to go on at all if you knew what the end of the line looked like. My prize for fighting, for not dying all those times, is a broken heart and very dry skin.