The Weight of Blood Quotes

“You grow up feeling the weight of blood, of family. There's no forsaking kin. But you can't help when kin forsakes you or when strangers come to be family.”
― Laura McHugh, The Weight of Blood

“...my mom always telling me that a man with clean nails hides his dirt on the inside.”
― Laura McHugh, The Weight of Blood

“I took in the thick night air, the sweet smell of honeysuckle, the chirping of frogs, to impress the moment in the folds of my memory, preserve it like a flower between pages of a book. To remember: This is how it feels to be happy.”
― Laura McHugh, The Weight of Blood

“It occurred to her then that there was a reason age drained the pleasure out of life, slowly stripping away all the things you enjoyed or took for granted. It was so you wouldn't need convincing when the time came. You'd be ready, because everything good in life was gone.”
― Laura McHugh, The Weight of Blood

“She'd make a game of it where she'd relax all the little bits of her body, starting with her fingers and toes and working in toward the center. She had to make herself limp and draw the hurt and want into a tight core inside, each time adding another layer to that core, so that if somebody came along and cut her open, they'd find inside a shining, perfect pearl, hard as any Willy Wonka jawbreaker.”
― Laura McHugh, The Weight of Blood

“You grow up feeling the weight of blood, of family. There’s no forsaking kin.”
― Laura McHugh, The Weight of Blood

“But there was always so much we didn't know about people, lurking right below the surface where we couldn't see it.”
― Laura McHugh, The Weight of Blood

“I was starting to think you were one kind of person until a situation arose that required you to be something else.”
― Laura McHugh, The Weight of Blood

“I hadn't taken into account how a place becomes part of you, claims you for its own.”
― Laura McHugh, The Weight of Blood

“I'd told the condensed version of my life story so many times over the years that I could recite it without emotion. When I said the words out loud, they felt like they belonged to someone else.”
― Laura McHugh, The Weight of Blood

“Just because you don’t see the devil doesn’t mean he isn’t there. He doesn’t carry a pitchfork. He hides in plain sight.”
― Laura McHugh, The Weight of Blood

“Nobody special had come around to replace Duane, and she was moping, going to bed alone every night with a box of Velveeta and a fork.”
― Laura McHugh, The Weight of Blood

“We kept a vegetable garden in a clearing beside the house where I’d spent countless hours picking rocks and pulling weeds. No matter how we tended the soil, the stones never stopped surfacing, denting the tiller blades every spring as they pushed their way out of the earth.”
― Laura McHugh, The Weight of Blood

“Spring was short-lived. The hills were ecstatic with blooms, an embarrassing wealth of trees and wildflowers: dogwoods in cream and pink, clouds of bright lavender redbuds, carpets of phlox and toothwort and buttercups.”
― Laura McHugh, The Weight of Blood

“It was hard not to be swayed by unreliable portents.”
― Laura McHugh, The Weight of Blood

“Gabby was right that we all had secrets, secrets that would hurt other people or expose us in ways we didn't want to be exposed.”
― Laura McHugh, The Weight of Blood