Heartwood Quotes

“Here’s an idea: All emotions start out as love. Later, that love is worked on by the forces of luck and suffering. Hate is just soured love. Fear is wounded love. Longing is homeless love. Love, not pain, is the mother. Love is the taproot. I have no regrets. I do not regret anything.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“That real mother, the mother that you get, you've got to love her, there's no choice. She is the mother you needed. She gave you strength, either because she loved you well or because she loved you poorly. She gave you your mission.
It's the dream mother that you have to let go of. The one you pined for, the one you thought your decency promised you. She's the one you've got to bury.
She's a mirage. She'll only break your heart.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“The world and its people are too much for me.
I am crushed between empathy and impotence.
I don't think I'm important. Not at all!
In fact, I am embarrassingly insubstantial.
Then why was I given this heart?
It is so much more than I need.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“A reader is never lonely.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“Every human being imagines, but few disclose. Children are quick to share their strangest thoughts and inventions. They cease to do so only after the shaming or baffled reactions of adults, portraits of which the child hangs on her inner walls, until at last, she closes the gallery.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“No woman is a star. No woman is a god or a tree or a magician. But for a while, in your arms, the universe was the right size, and I knew where I was.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“Dear Mother, You used to call me Sparrow. Why Sparrow? Well, because the woods are full of sparrows, and you loved everything outdoors. Songbirds, wildflowers, wind. You could read the weather like a poem. But why did I remind you of a sparrow and not another songbird? I never thought to ask. With their white cheeks and dingy underparts, plain brown sparrows are everywhere. They beg at outdoor tables and hop under city benches. They nest in chimneys and rafters and even tailpipes. Sparrows are not much to look at, but they’re smart. Canny. Tiny, feathered battle-axes. Sparrows are survivors. I like to think that’s what you meant… No woman is a star. No woman is a god or a tree or a magician. But for a while, in your arms, the universe was the right size, and I knew where I was…Mothers have a sixth sense. Their love is occult.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“Your love dug me a kind of trench, a groove in the universe where I still go to mourn.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“It may be dangerous to be unfathered, exposed on the animal plain, but life unmothered is simply unlivable. I mean, why go on?”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“But the nonbeliever is in a bind, because without God, who forgives? Human beings are pretty unforgiving. The law certainly isn’t forgiving. Forgiveness needs a messenger. Some folks say, “Forgive yourself.” But who the hell can do that? It’s a goddamned conflict of interest.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“I ran with a wail stuck in my throat. It was ridiculous, it was all ridiculous. Not just him, not just this - all of it - life - to be afflicted with the endless urge to survive. It turns out, there's almost nothing you can do to stop trying.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“I wanted to tell all my people, my Bronx people, “You gotta come see this! These woods are ours too. These woods are everybody’s.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“You go to the trail for the mountaintops. You go to get away from people. But it’s funny. The people end up being what you remember the most.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“PAINsylvania. The state motto should be “Why, God, why?”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“understood the masochistic level of exposure a mother takes on the moment her child is born, how agonizing her position. Your response to life’s chaos was to over-function. You were a taskmaster, a list maker, a toer-of-the-line. Like mothers the world over, you labored simultaneously on multiple fronts, clocking in at work while still managing a family. (Sick child/flat tire/dirty grout/empty fridge.) Thank you for being conflicted. Thank you for how godawful you looked certain mornings. For your occasional deranged soliloquies of resentment. Honestly, they made me love you more. Thank you also for playing make”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“A wind has come and gone, taking apart the mind; it has left in its wake a strange lucidity. How privileged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you. —Louise Glück, “October”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“Does it bother you that I never wanted children of my own? Maybe in private moments you think it speaks poorly of you or of your mothering. But the opposite is true. My choice reflects my awe of mothers. After all, as an anxious child, I understood the masochistic level of exposure a mother takes on the moment her child is born, how agonizing her position. Your response to life’s chaos was to over-function. You were a taskmaster, a list maker, a toer-of-the-line. Like mothers the world over, you labored simultaneously on multiple fronts, clocking in at work while still managing a family. (Sick child/flat tire/dirty grout/empty fridge.) Thank you for being conflicted. Thank you for how godawful you looked certain mornings. For your occasional deranged soliloquies of resentment. Honestly, they made me love you more.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“woods. The world and its people are too much for me. I am crushed between empathy and impotence. I don’t think I’m important. Not at all! In fact, I am embarrassingly insubstantial. Then why was I given this heart? It is so much more than I need.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“I’ve heard it said that the sorrow of human life is that it ends. But I don’t think that’s the source of our sorrow. Everything ends, not just human lives. Days end. Species disappear. Planets die. No, the real sorrow of human life is that we feel. That’s our affliction.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“It’s the dream mother that you have to let go of. The one you pined for, the one you thought your decency promised you. She’s the one you’ve got to bury. She’s a mirage. She’ll only break your heart.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“That real mother, the mother that you get, you’ve got to love her, there’s no choice. She is the mother you needed. She gave you strength, either because she loved you well or because she loved you poorly. She gave you your mission.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“Gotham. Full of hustlers. Bright as a galaxy. My home.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“It’s been a while since I’ve made it to church, but in my heart, I’m still faithful. Because of this, I do not believe in such things as “unforgivable mistakes.” God knows you are a broken sinner and loves you anyway.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“Here's an idea: All emotions start out as love. Later that love is worked on by the forces of luck and suffering. Hate is just soured love. Fear is wounded love. Longing is homeless love. Love, not pain, is the mother. Love is the taproot.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“You're an idiot. You're not half the man she is.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“Eventually, I understood that motherhood, as the child imagines it, is unperformable. No woman is a star. No woman is a god or a tree or a magician.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“All emotions start out as love. Later, that love is worked on by the forces of luck and suffering. Hate is just soured love. Fear is wounded love. Longing is homeless love. Love, not pain, is the mother. Love is the taproot. I have no regrets. I do not regret anything.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“Some lost people don’t have the skills but instead they have something else. I don’t know what to call it. Heart. They survive because of their love of life or of the dear ones in their mind. They stay present. They keep their eyes open. Often, when these people are rescued, they report feeling a sense of wonder out there. For the moments they had left. For the privilege of being alive at all.” A breeze crosses the crowd. Leaves whiffle. It is quiet. “And that’s who you’re looking for,” I say. “That’s Sparrow.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“A fire is a bedtime story. It starts fierce, in high flame, but it’s in the dying down that the fire is most itself, when the heat from the embers enters you and hushes all your intentions, both your goodness and your graft.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“But the nonbeliever is in a bind, because without God, who forgives? Human beings are pretty unforgiving. The law certainly isn’t forgiving. Forgiveness needs a messenger.”
― Amity Gaige, Heartwood