Broken Country Quotes

“It’s strange, the patchwork stories we tell someone when we want them to catch up, a shortcut to knowing us, as if such a thing were possible.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“Frank and I dance around each other’s sadness. Any couple who has lost a child will tell you the same. You see it in the other, of course you do, but it’s like you’re on a seesaw of grief, and all you want is to avoid tipping the other one down.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“This is a love story with too many beginnings. I refuse to think about how it is going to end.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“You have to fool yourself into thinking you already are the thing you want to become.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“For Frank, Love Beth If the man could hear me, I would tell him this: It was instant, Dad It was instant. No pain The sorrow was all your own. Enough now. I would tell him that. Lives should be measured in intensity. Remember mine For its glory-stretch of furious light and wondrous beauty. The world we love-lived Is earth Is dust Is me, Dad.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“Lives should be measured in intensity.
Remember mine
For its glory-stretch of furious light
and wondrous beauty.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“The swoop of disappointment as I watch him walk away is almost as pronounced as my relief.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“I feel my face flush with anger. Day in, day out, men are admired for their sexual prowess, for the “conquests” notched upon their bedposts. Whereas women, who dare to do the same, are derided, and, most often, it is other women dishing out the derision.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“Do you think, Gabriel says, if we are careful, we could have this for a little while? Because, what we had before, you and I, it was more than most people ever have.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“We didn’t take enough photos of Bobby, we didn’t understand photos would be the only thing we’d have left.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“You have to fool yourself into thinking you already are the thing you want to become. That’s what my father says. You write, therefore you’re a writer.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“This is a love story and it is better, by far, than any of the ones I have dreamed up in the past. If I’m allowed a wish, just one, then it is this: I wish for our story to have a happy ending.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“Lives should be measured in intensity.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“He is facing away from me, but I hear the smile in his voice. “Our siblings know us best, don’t they? They know exactly how to hit where it hurts.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“There can be no greater intoxication, no purer feeling, than the moment when you meet your child after all the months of wondering and hoping and dreaming.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“You can never change back once you’ve had a child, even if that child no longer exists.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“Why do adults do this? Why do they promise things they have no way of being able to deliver?”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“I’d forgotten how young children, much like animals, can sense your pain without being afraid of it.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“I find myself in this situation often: managing other people’s awkwardness around my grief, my loss.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“Perhaps that’s what it is, this feeling never experienced before, elation, excitement, a furious kind of happiness. Perhaps this is love.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“But we are not who we once were. He is a father, and I was a mother, our identities as merged as they once were separated. You can never change back once you’ve had a child, even if that child no longer exists.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“When the tree is a foot in the air, I see the first flash of red cotton and the sound that comes from me has no human in it, spirit shriek, ancient, guttural cry.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“Ours was a complicated tale with many pieces to fit together. All of us were to blame in some way—Gabriel and me, Frank, Leo, and Jimmy too. Everyone played a part in the tragedy. And everything was about Bobby, really, when you dug deep enough.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“she does before she falls asleep. She pauses for a second or two, assessing the man walking up the field toward us. Then she screams, “Daddy!” and she begins to run, her sheep abandoned. I watch her racing down the field, elbows pumping. She is wearing pink shorts and red wellies and her hair trails behind her in a dark cloud. I watch Frank as he opens his arms, as she flies into them. As he swoops her up and spins her around. I can hear them laughing. I watch as Frank throws his head back and yells at the gray clouds passing overhead. “I am home. I AM HOME.” As Grace tries it, resting her neck against her father’s shoulder, face upturned to the sky. “I AM HOME. I AM HOME.” As they laugh and yell and laugh some more, this father and daughter who are meeting for the first time. Then they turn to me. Frank stretches out his right arm and Grace, cottoning on instantly, holds out her left. A giant man and girl scarecrow.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“Pause after the recounting, take the time to taste again the euphoria of that day, when everything was ahead.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“It’s not that I haven’t thought about it. Part of me craves a newborn, that blissful, insular vacuum, coexistence in a sleep-deprived parallel universe, as closely connected as you were when the tiny creature was in your womb. The scent of them, the shape of them, the warm weight cradled in your arms, the delicate sound of their breathing.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“Don’t say that. You have to fool yourself into thinking you already are the thing you want to become.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“Is it normal to love one person your whole life like you and Daddy?” Bobby asks me, out of the blue.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“At the school, my son’s confidence amazes me. Most of the new kindergarten children are clinging to their mothers, but Bobby saunters toward his classroom without a backward glance. At the last moment he remembers me, sprinting back to whisper in my ear, “Will you be all right without me?” No, Bobby. Let’s go home. We’ll try this another day, I manage not to say. “I’ll be fine. You go and have some fun.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“Don't say that. You have to fool yourself into thinking you already are the thing you want to become.”
― Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country