The Farming of Bones Quotes

“Misery won't touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprints on you; sometimes it leaves them for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“I wish I could've done more for her, but some sorrows were simply too individual to share.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“Old age is not meant to be survived alone," Man Rapadou said, her voice trailing with her own hidden thoughts. "Death should come gently, slowly, like a man's hand approaching your body. There can be joy in impatience if there is time to find the joy.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“Que diga amor? Love? Hate? Speak to me of things the world has yet to truly understand, of the instant meaning of each bird's call, of a child's secret thoughts in her mother's womb, of the measured rhythmical time of every man and woman's breath, of the true colors of the inside of the moon, of the larger miracles in small things, the deeper mysteries.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“It is perhaps the great discomfort of those trying to silence the world to discover that we have voices sealed inside our heads, voices that with each passing day, grow even louder than the clamor of the world outside.”
― Edwidge Danticat , The Farming of Bones

“Two mountains can never meet but perhaps you and I can meet again. I am coming to your waterfall”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“Instead I dreamt of walking out of the world, of spending all my time inside with no one to talk to, and no one to talk to me. All I wanted was a routine, a series of sterile acts that I could perform without dedication or effort, a life where everything was constantly the same, where every day passed exactly like the one before.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“Perhaps there had been joy for them in finding that sugar could be made from blood.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“Jephthah called together the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim. The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, 'Let me cross over,' the men of Gilead asked him, 'Are you an Ephraimite?' If he replied, 'No,' they said, 'All right, say Shibboleth.' If he said, 'Sibboleth,' because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Fourty-thousand were killed at the time.

- Judges 12:4-6”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“At times I like it when he is just a deep echo, one utterance after another filling every crevice of the room, a voice that sounds like it's never been an infant's whimper, a boy's whisper, a young man's mumble, a voice that speaks as if every word it has ever uttered has always been and will always be for me.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“For so long this had been my life, but it was all in the past. Now we all had to try and find the future.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“Our fatigue limited our desire to talk. Besides, each person's story did nothing except bring you closer to your own pain.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“I once heard an elder say that the dead who have no use for their words leave them as part of their children's inheritance. Proverbs, teeth suckings, obscenities, even grunts and moans once inserted in special places during conversations, all are passed along to the next heir.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“In my sleep, I see my mother rising, like the mother spirit of the rivers, above the current that drowned her.
She is wearing a dress of glass, fashioned out of the hardened clarity of the river, and this dress flows like raised dust behind her as she runs towards me and enfolds me in her smoke-light arms. Her face is like mine now, in fact it is the exact same long, three-different-shades-of-night face, and she is smiling a both-row-of-teeth revealing smile.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“Those who die young, they are cheated,” she said. “Not cheated out of life, because life is a penance, but the young, they’re cheated because they don’t know it’s coming. They don’t have time to move closer, to return home. When you know you’re going to die, you try to be near the bones of your own people. You don’t even think you have bones when you’re young, even when you break them, you don’t believe you have them. But when you’re old, they start reminding you they’re there. They start turning to dust on you, even as you’re walking here and there, going from place to place. And this is when you crave to be near the bones of your own people. My children never felt this. They had to look death in the face, even before they knew what it was. Just like you did, no?”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“I knew very well, from the memory of it as it was once carved into my young face: I will bear anything, carry any load, suffer any shame, walk with eyes to the ground, if only for the very small chance that one day our fates might come to being somewhat closer and I would be granted for all my years of travail and duty an honestly gained life that in some extremely modest way would begin to resemble hers.

Go in peace, Señora.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“To make clear his sentiment, he tapped the mortar pile with his fists, reminding the group of the most unforgivable weaknesses of the dead: their absence and their silence.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“I’m afraid to be shy, distant, and cold.
Page 11”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“To teach me that a lifetime can be vast as a hundred years or sudden as a few breaths? Enjoy this one you have left. It all passes so fast. In the time it takes to draw a breath.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“Freedom is a passing thing, a man said. Someone can always come and snatch it away.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“Misery won’t touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprints on you; sometimes it leaves them for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of.”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones

“Father Romain always made much of our being from the same place, just as Sebatstien did. Most people here did. It was a way of being joined to your old life through the presence of another person. At times you could sit for a whole evening with such individuals, just listening to their existence unfold, from the house where they were born to the hill where they wanted to be buried. It was their way of returning home, with you as a witness or as someone to bring them back to the present...”
― Edwidge Danticat, The Farming of Bones