Bonnie > Bonnie's Quotes

“think that for others in my family, who didn’t see him at the end, who didn’t witness his slow decline, he may live intact in memory, much as he was before his illness. I hope so. But that isn’t true for me. It was in part to exorcise my final haunting images of my father that I wanted to look at, to explain, the way he fragmented and lost himself in his illness; and who he was before”
― Sue Miller, The Story of My Father: A Memoir

“One of Montaigne’s key instances is the story of Pomponius Atticus, a correspondent of Cicero’s. When Atticus fell ill, and medical attempts to prolong his existence merely prolonged his pain, he decided that the best solution was to starve himself to death. No need to petition a court in those days, citing the terminal deterioration in your “quality of life”: Atticus, being a Free Ancient, merely informed his friends and family of his intention, then refused food and waited for the end. In this, he was much confounded. Miraculously”
― Julian Barnes, Nothing to Be Frightened of

“Through the gauzy blue fabric, you could barely see the bruise.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“for the first time ever, Desiree hadn’t known what her sister might do.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“But even here, where nobody married dark, you were still colored and that meant that white men could kill you for refusing to die.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“As they grew, they no longer seemed like one body split in two, but two bodies poured into one, each pulling it her own way. —”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“Hadn’t she tried to warn her all her life? A dark man would trample her beauty. He’d love it at first but like anything he desired and could never attain, he would soon grow to resent it. Now he was punishing her for it.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“After the twins were born, Adele never built an altar. But later, after her girls disappeared, she wondered if she’d been arrogant. Maybe she should have just built the altar, no matter how foolish it sounded.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“She needed a job. Money. A plan. But those children staring at her daughter. The deputy dismissing her. Sam gripping her throat. She waved over Lorna again, wanting to forget it all.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“You couldn’t separate the shame from being caught doing something from the shame of the act itself. If she hadn’t believed, even a bit, that spending time with Early was wrong, why hadn’t she ever asked him to meet her at Lou’s for a malt? Or take a walk or sit out by the riverbank? She was probably no different from her mother in Early’s eyes. That’s why he’d left town without saying good-bye. — NOW EARLY JONES was back in Mallard, no longer a reedy boy carrying fruit in his tattered shirt but a grown man.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“Nobody had warned her of this as a girl, when they carried on over her beautiful light complexion. How easily her skin would wear the mark of an angry man.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“crisp pillowcases quietly, while Desiree always drifted toward the gossiping girls planning nights out. Stella tracking each penny they both earned, Stella sleeping beside her, still occasionally caught in nightmares until Desiree gently nudged her awake. As the weeks turned into months, their sudden jaunt into the city began to feel more permanent.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“She was good at pretending to be brave. She would never admit to Farrah that she was homesick and worried always about money.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“Desiree had always been the prideful one; of course she’d lash out when wounded, unlike Stella, who’d rather die than make a scene.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“Stella needed to find a new job, so she’d responded to a listing in the newspaper for secretarial work in an office inside the Maison Blanche building. An office like that would never hire a colored girl,”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“But the passe blanc were a mystery. You could never meet one who’d passed over undetected, the same way you’d never know someone who successfully faked her own death; the act could only be successful if no one ever discovered it was a ruse.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half

“PCP intoxicates by causing the limbic system, which processes emotions, to function independently from perceptions of the outside world.”
― Sara Manning Peskin, A Molecule Away from Madness: Tales of the Hijacked Brain

“Wasn’t it amazing how resilient people were, how they persisted, how they kept trying to connect!”
― Anne Tyler, French Braid

“No one could have been more warlike in his opposition to war.”
― Bruce Duffy, The World As I Found It

“The sari’s rose-pink border was fringed with a layer of mud. Patches of sweat darkened the underarms of her choli. Trust Ma to dress inappropriately for every occasion or activity.”
― Monica Ali, Love Marriage

“She was greatly moved by her mother’s love marriage, more than she had been in years. Love, Ma was telling her, not only in words but by example, conquers all.”
― Monica Ali, Love Marriage

“umbellifers”
― Diana Norman, Taking Liberties

“eldritch”
― Diana Norman, Taking Liberties

“jimberjawed,”
― Geraldine Brooks, Horse

“jussive.”
― Geraldine Brooks, Horse

“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
― Howard Zinn

“did not feel that I mattered. Because in a way I have never been able to feel that. And so the days were hard.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“and then I would think about when the girls were little, but they were somehow not always happy memories for me, because I seemed only to remember how William had been cheating on me for so many years during that time, and so what I might otherwise have thought of as a good memory was not one.”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“She spoke mostly of her work with the ACLU, and I thought: She is not talking about anything real. And I think by that I mean that she was not talking about how she felt,”
― Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

“What did Duncan have with which to organize pointless, brutal life?”
― Gish Jen, Thank You, Mr. Nixon