Stones for Ibarra Quotes

“They have not considered that memories are like corks left out of bottles. They swell. They no longer fit.”
― Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra

“It is something they will see everywhere - a disregard for danger, a companionship with death. By the end of a year they will know it well: the antic bravado, the fatal games, the coffin shop beside the cantina, the sugar skulls on the frosted cake.”
― Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra

“We have come to live among specters, Sara tells herself. They are not people, but silhouettes sketched on a backdrop to deceive us into thinking that the stage is crowded. She searches for an expression, any expression, in their eyes - the eyes of that man on the corner whose raised hand holds a cigarette he is allowing to burn to his fingers; the eyes of that woman who has lifted a dripping jar of water halfway to her head. They will never speak to me, she thinks. I will never know their names.”
― Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra

“Paco had a way with plants.....Sara believed that whenever he walked under a tree it
grew a new branch to shade him.”
― Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra

“Sara understood this passion that beset geologists. Their minds were heavy with theories shaped by fire and water, their pockets weighted with residual bits of evidence chipped from road cuts and canyon walls, identifiable, able to be pigeonholed in time that stretched back five hundred million years. She understood that the rock in the Canadian's hand was likely to endure intact long after the bones of the four people in this room would be discovered set in sandstone among snail shells and ferns.”
― Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra