Booth

by Karen Joy Fowler

“Children can snatch happiness from even the darkest times,” Ann said. “That’s God’s gift, that’s how God loves children. You grow up, you can’t do that no more. You don’t have that gift. God’s taken it back.”

This is a good reminder that no one in the world is a reliable source for their own story.

His mother’s love had made his life tolerable. And then she was gone and he, at nine years old, helping make her coffin.

Whatever native talents he has, Lincoln attributes entirely to his first mother’s bloodline. That he was allowed to make something of them is the work of his second mother. He credits his father with none of it.

For many years now, Rosalie’s job has been to save her mother. From this day forward, Edwin’s job will be the saving of the whole family. This is a job no one can do, and there is no one but Edwin to do it. “No fair,” Johnny says.

Lincoln abhorred the war and admired the soldiers. How hard is that to understand?

She thinks that she’s performing grief rather than feeling it. What she feels is nothing.

She’s long understood that no one will ever love her as much as she needs to be loved. She thinks she was born knowing this.

Asia feels the widening gap between the person she wants to be and the person she is.

There are so many ways for a spinster to look ridiculous. Rosalie admires Miss Struthoff for not caring.

To the children of Shakespeare all the world’s a metaphor.

He thinks about Father’s playbills and about time passing and how the things you can keep really only serve to remind you of all that you’ve lost.

She is my severest critic, Edwin says, and therefore my kindest.

They just didn’t in the end agree about the rank of their suffering.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

Are there ghosts? How could there not be?