Bear Quotes

“When they first learned her diagnosis, the sisters had cried over it together. Sam felt shattered. That was back when she pictured pain as something swift and final. She understood better, now, what it actually was—not a glass dropped onto a tile floor, one terrible burst, but a tree required to grow over years in a space that limited it. Branches curled in on themselves, leaves dropping. A living thing that was forced, relentlessly, to submit. That was how sorrow acted on them.”
― Julia Phillips, Bear

“What was Sam afraid of? Withering away here. Dreaming of chances she'd never be able to take, and shriveling up from that denial, getting poorer and put under more pressure and pushed farther from the rest of the world. Compared to those fears, getting mauled by a bear seemed a delight.”
― Julia Phillips, Bear

“But Sam knew. Sam, from the start, had treated Madeline the way her sister ought to have behaved toward the bear.”
― Julia Phillips, Bear

“Madeline’s note did say that her office learned the bear had been a grizzly after all.”
― Julia Phillips, Bear

“They were sisters and they would last past the end of time. Sam knew that. Then the bear. It closed its jaws over Elena’s face. Sam saw her sister go.”
― Julia Phillips, Bear

“Madeline said, “He’s not a grizzly.” Elena faced Madeline with interest: “He’s not?”
― Julia Phillips, Bear

“There'd been only three hundred students in the whole school, which made it a tiny, gossipy hellhole, a bucket of crabs snapping at each other and falling over themselves.”
― Julia Phillips, Bear