The Lace Reader Quotes

“There is lace in every living thing: the bare branches of winter, the patterns of clouds, the surface of water as it ripples in the breeze.... Even a wild dog's matted fur shows a lacy pattern if you look at it closely enough.”
― Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader

“I'll pit my God against your god any day, I say to the Calvinists. It's not their god I'm praying to.... The God I'm praying to is neither male nor female. My God is the one who exists apart from all of men's agendas, the God who takes you away when there is no possible place you can go.”
― Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader

“I realize the selfishness of children. We love them, and we revolve around their universe, but they don't revolve around ours.”
― Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader

“We all find means of anesthesia.”
― Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader

“There is no wrong answer. Even so, it is easy to receive wrong results, simply by asking the wrong question.”
― Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader

“My name is Towner Whitney. No, that's not exactly true. My real first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time.

I am a crazy woman... That last part is true.”
― Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader

“All forgiveness is self-forgiveness. That’s what he says. But I do not yet know how to forgive. Or who, in the end, really needs to be forgiven.”
― Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader

“I like soup, do you like soup?”
― Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader

“All forgiveness is self-forgiveness”
― Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader

“One of the secrets of good manners is learning to listen.”
― Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader

“tricks to avoid the shyness that descends on children during such events. “Keep asking questions,” she advised. “It gets the conversation going and keeps the focus off you. Find out what they’re interested in and what their preferences are. Offer something of yourself in the question; it’s more intimate that way. For example, appropriate dinner conversation might be to turn to the person next to you and say, ‘I like soup. Do you like soup?”
― Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader

“The same way they celebrate the witches, who never existed at all in the days of the witch trials but who thrive here in great numbers now.”
― Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader

“May’s haircuts were Marblehead’s version of a magic show. The townie kids used to form lines up and down Front Street to watch as Mr. Dooling pulled the rattail comb through my mother’s hair. With each pull, the comb would snag on something, then stop. As he reached into the mass to unwind the tangle, he would find and remove everything from sea glass to shells to smooth stones. In one particularly matted tangle, he found a sea horse. Once he even found a postcard sent from Tahiti to someone in Beverly Farms.”
― Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader

“There is lace in every living thing: the bare branches of winter, the patterns of clouds, the surface of water as it ripples in the breeze…. Even a wild dog’s matted fur shows a lacy pattern if you look at it closely enough.”
― Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader

“My God is the one who exists apart from all of men’s agendas, the God who takes you away when there is no possible place you can go.”
― Brunonia Barry, The Lace Reader