Nadine Bjursten > Nadine's Quotes

“She was being released from the sorrows of the soil that had bred her.”
― Nadine Bjursten, Half a Cup of Sand and Sky

“When one starts a new chapter, the page shouldn’t be messy with commentary but white and crisp, ready for one’s best self.”
― Nadine Bjursten, Half a Cup of Sand and Sky

“Beauty, it seemed to Amineh, did not have to be extraordinary to be cherished. Maybe that was its secret, that it lived in the most common expressions of man and nature. The artisan had discovered it in a block of wood, which he had carved into a scene of a young woman sitting at a window. The locals had created it through the colorful geraniums they placed on small protrusions covering every square meter of their adobe walls. Even the animals were not immune. Who could doubt the starlings’ ecstatic flight around the minarets of the mosque was inspired by the symmetry of that aging structure.”
― Nadine Bjursten, Half a Cup of Sand and Sky

“Unless we love ourselves, our hearts are as good as a black hole all the love in the world can’t fill.”
― Nadine Bjursten, Half a Cup of Sand and Sky

“Smell unlocks your past. It brings you back to another time you didn’t know you had in you to remember.”
― Nadine Bjursten, Half a Cup of Sand and Sky

“In case you haven't noticed, people get hard-hearted against the people they hurt. Because they can't stand it. Literally. To think we did that to someone. I did that. So we think of all the reasons why it's okay we did whatever we did.”
― Elizabeth Strout, The Burgess Boys