Falling to Earth Quotes

“The light stretches away from the windows as if it is bent on getting away, much the way Mae sees her shadow toiling outside of an afternoon, stretching itself out long and thin on the pavement in different directions by turns as if by perseverance alone it will one day surprise them both by snapping and rolling away.”
― Kate Southwood, Falling to Earth

“Before the storm, he'd been a man who never met a stranger, never seemed to doubt himself. He could run faster than anyone; there had been joy in his movements, his world was full of possibilities, and he'd stood taller than he actually was. Like a house cat, Mae had once thought privately, who discounted the rumor of tigers.”
― Kate Southwood, Falling to Earth

“The children do not doubt the evidence of their own bodies. They see what the adults cannot: that one is responsible to a beating heart, that the simple act of walking means moving forward in more than just the literal sense, and that even the act of reaching into the wreckage of a house to save a book or a tea kettle is a kind of beginning.”
― Kate Southwood, Falling to Earth

“The front door opens then, and when Paul raises his head and turns toward the sound he sees Johnny there, setting his suitcase on the floor. In that moment, Paul ages one hundred years. No longer the little boy, running to catch the bigger one; always behind, always slower, forever watching with naked adoration the brother who might slow his pace, might turn, might smile just at him. Now Paul has truly overtaken John, run right past the first moment they were equals, outstripping and surpassing him in being the first to bury his wife. He looks at John and sees him clearly, sees in John the way he himself must have looked to others before the storm: like a man who decided early that his dreams were within his grasp, that they were neither fanciful nor more than his due, and that he could attain and keep them by means as simple as industry and devotion. He sees in John what others saw in him after the storm: a man who still had everything he’d started the day with, a man who had a wife.”
― Kate Southwood, Falling to Earth

“He’s been rendered nothing more than a ghost now; a vapor, the suspicion of a man who once inhabited this place.”
― Kate Southwood, Falling to Earth

“It’s a curious feeling, knowing he has exhausted all of his options, knowing that he has literally tried everything he can try. For the first time, Paul thinks that it would have been better if they had lost the house or the lumberyard in the storm. He has never allowed himself the thought before, banishing it when it came creeping around the edges of his thoughts as mere foolishness and dangerous wallowing.”
― Kate Southwood, Falling to Earth

“memory is something more than recollection; that the idea of a moment can sometimes seem as real as the moment once was itself.”
― Kate Southwood, Falling to Earth

“Footings are poured, foundations laid. Resentment creeps in. A man perceives that he has received less somehow than others and allows himself a furtive bitterness. He is silent at first because he knows his bitterness is a shameful thing, but once he realizes that his rancor makes him feel more alive, once he accepts it, he must begin to feed it. He broadcasts his bitterness in open conversation hoping to find companionship, hoping to foster that same feeling in his neighbors.”
― Kate Southwood, Falling to Earth

“Once they’d gone back inside the house, it might have been possible to pretend it was just another day. Nothing was changed inside, after all. The world outside the house had gone all wrong, but inside everything was the same. No, not everything, Mae thinks. They were not the same. They had stopped being themselves once they’d fought their way out of the cellar; opening those doors again had been the last thing they’d do as just themselves for a good long while.”
― Kate Southwood, Falling to Earth