Keely

“Some of what makes us human is our smallness. The brevity of our lifespans, the shortness of our memories, the narrowness of each person's field of vision. My Marian-ness is in the slender sample of the world that I am able to bring to my work. If we did not have this smallness, these limits, there would be no way to tell Ffarmer from Sappho, or Eliot, or anybody. So what was I to make of Charlotte--not small but all-devouring, ubiquitous, remembering? Anointed, in a way, by her magnitude. And at the same time, I am certain, diminished by it.”
― Sean Michaels, Do You Remember Being Born?

“We had one horse, one mule, and a wagon. We had Horhay with his limp arm and his long past, and Dickie with his hopes for the necklace now dashed and turned to dread of its curse, and me with my ache for your mother who was destined to take her leave of me, and you with a life before you and a look of puzzlement on your face. We had your mother and her sweet baby to be. All together, it was a untidy mix of items.”
― Elizabeth Crook, The Madstone: A Novel

“I opened my eyes: soft light, morning, cool. The shimmer of a dream as it departed. I have always enjoyed waking up to different weather, as if the world's been up to something in the night.”
― Sean Michaels, Do You Remember Being Born?

“Had we been in town amongst people, then we might have been merely interested at the news of having a cursed item in our possession. But out in the midst of no place, shielded by only a scanty wall of scraggly mesquite and weesach from view of the road, where troubles might come from, in the dark of night with the sky stretched out and showing how small we was, and the number of stars making it plain how little we might matter to the broad scheme of the world, I admit to feeling alarm.”
― Elizabeth Crook, The Madstone: A Novel