The Winter People Quotes

“If snow melts down to water, does it still remember being snow?”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“Madness is always a wonderful excuse, don’t you think? For doing terrible things to other people.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“we all do what we think is best. Sometimes we make terrible mistakes, sometimes we do the right thing. Sometimes we never know. We just have to hope”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“Q: Bury deep, Pile on stones, Yet I will Dig up the bones. What am I? A: Memories — A FOLK RIDDLE”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“And, as in all fairy tales, there was bloodshed, there was loss.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“She was his great adventure; his love for her had taken him places he'd never dreamed of going.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“How can you dream if you don’t have a soul?”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“Young Reverend Ayers looks at a lake and sees only his own reflection in it; that is what God is to him. He does not see the creatures that live down deep, the dragonflies that hover, the frog on the lily pad.” Auntie’s face was full of pity and scorn as she shook her head and spat tobacco juice again. “His heart and mind are closed to the true beauty of the lake, the place where all its magic lies.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“I think people see what they want to see... But think about it: if you'd lost someone you love, wouldn't you give almost anything to have the chance to see them again?”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“The people who are stuck between here and there, waiting. It reminds me of winter, how everything is all pale and cold and full of nothing, and all you can do is wait for spring.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“Here she was at eight, with the chemistry set she’d begged for at Christmas. Her father was beside her in this one, showing her a picture of the periodic table, explaining how everything on earth, everything in the universe, even—people, starfish, cement, bicycles, and far-off planets—was made up of a combination of these elements. “Isn’t it amazing to think of, Ruthie?” he’d asked. Ruthie had found the idea that we were only a series of neatly constructed puzzle pieces or building blocks vaguely unsettling—even at eight, she wanted there to be more to it than that.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“Tracer was a good guy, but Ruthie didn’t understand how one individual could smoke the amount of pot he did and still function.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“watch Mama and Papa while they sleep. It makes me feel strange and lovely and more like a shadow than a real girl—awake when no one else is, me and the moon smiling down on Mama and Papa while they dream.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“The covers are tented up over me and Mama’s heads, and it’s all dark, like we’re deep underground. Animals in a den. All warm and snuggly.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“Mama and I are curled up, pressed against each other like twin commas.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“Katherine believed that when the work was going well things just fell into place, as if by magic. It was the artist’s job to open herself up, let herself be guided to whatever the next step might be.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“Gary had grown up in a small town in Idaho and said it was kid heaven—there was room to breathe, to explore, you knew your neighbors, and your parents didn’t mind if you were out late because bad things never happened there. You were safe.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“The truth was, he believed he was the luckiest man on earth to have these two for a wife and daughter—it was like getting to live with fairies or mermaids, some breathtakingly beautiful creatures he was not meant to understand fully.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“Q: Bury deep, Pile on stones, Yet I will Dig up the bones. What am I?
A: Memories — A FOLK RIDDLE”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“What exactly is it you'd like to know? [the book store manager asked]. He had an odd expression, like he was asking her a trick question. [Katherine] thought a minute. What DID she want to know? Why had she taken the trouble to come out in the cold to learn about a woman she'd never heard of until yesterday? She had that feeling she got when she was doing her art and suddenly discovered the missing piece that ties everything together: a tingling in the back of her neck, a crazy buzzed-rush of a feeling that spread through her whole body. She didn't understand the role that Sara Harrison Shea, the ring Gary had given her, or the book he had hidden would play, but she knew that this was important, and that she had to give herself over to it and see where it might lead.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“Each photo is like a novel I can never open, Gary had explained once. I can hold it in my hand and only begin to imagine what's inside -- the lives these people might have led. Sometimes if there was a little clue on the photo - a name, date, or place - he'd try to research it...”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“She’d carried him home, pulled the buckshot pellets out of him, stitched him up, and nursed him back to health. He’d been by her side ever since. “He was lucky you found him,” I said after hearing the story. “Luck had nothing to do with it,” Auntie told me. “He and I were meant for one another.” I never saw such devotion in a dog—or any animal, for that matter. His wounds had healed, but the buckshot left him blind in his right eye, which was milky white. His ghost eye, Auntie called it. “He came so close to death, he’s got one eye back there still,” she explained. I loved Buckshot, but I hated that milky-white moon that seemed to see everything and nothing all at once.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“I killed myself again and again in my dreams. I’d wake up weeping”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“I killed myself again and again in my dreams. I’d wake up weeping, full of sorrow to find myself alive, trapped in my wretched body, in my wretched life. Alone …”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” For the first time, I understood the word of God, because Reverend Ayers spoke it. His voice, all the girls said, could soothe the Devil himself.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“He blamed the ledgy soil and barren fields, where almost nothing would grow; the water that tasted of sulfur. It was as if the land itself dared anything to stay alive.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“I think everything must have a soul and a memory, even tigers and roses, even snow.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“He took me to see a lady with tangled hair who lives inside an old hollow tree. She’s been dead a long time. She’s one of the winter people.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“Ruthie had found the idea that we were only a series of neatly constructed puzzle pieces or building blocks vaguely unsettling—even at eight, she wanted there to be more to it than that.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People

“There are different kinds of cleverness, Sara.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Winter People