Sold Quotes

“Simply to endure is to triumph.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“If you look hard enough, chaos turns into order the way letters turn into words.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“This affliction--hope--is so cruel and stubborn, I believe it will kill me”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“Trying to remember, I have learned, is like trying to clutch a handful of fog. Trying to forget, like trying to hold back the monsoon.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“Instead, we linger over a luxury that costs nothing: Imagining what may be.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“Inside my head I carry:
my baby goat,
my baby brother,
my ama's face,
our family's future.

My bundle is light.
My burden is heavy.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“In the evening, the brilliant yellow pumpkin blossoms will close, drunk on sunshine, while the milky white jasmine will open their slender throats and sip the chill Himalayan air.

At night, low hearths will send up wispy curls of smoke fragrant with a dozen dinners, and darkness will clothe the land.

Except on nights when the moon is full. On those nights, the hillside and the valley below are bathed in a magical white light, the glow of the perpetual snows that blanket the mountaintops. On those nights I lie restless in the sleeping loft, wondering what the world is like beyond my mountain home.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“Guard the portals of your mind.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“When I have run out of words to copy, I look out the window at this strange place called India. Inside the train, the people around me are snoring. I don't understand how they can close their eyes when there is so much to see.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“My bundle is light.
My burden is heavy.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“I have been beaten here,
locked away,
violated a hundred times
and a hundred times more.
I have been starved
and cheated,
tricked
and disgraced.

How odd it is that I am undone by the simple kindness of a small boy with a yellow pencil.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“A KIND OF ILLNESS
This ache in my chest is a relentless thing, worse than any fever.
A fever is gone with a few of Mumtaz's white pills. But this illness has had me in its grip for a week now.
This affliction--hope--is so cruel and stubborn, I believe it will kill me.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“Ama wipes her hands on her apron, looks up at our old roof with new eyes, and lifts the baby from his basket. She twirls him in the air, her skirts flying around her ankles the way the clouds swirl around the mountain cap--her laughter fresh and strange and musical to my ears.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“A man who doles out sweets, and slaps, with the same hand.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“I have been beaten here,
locked away,
violated a hundred times,
and a hundred times more.
I have been starved,
and cheated,
tricked
and disgraced.
How odd is it that I am undone by the simple kindness of a small boy with a yellow pencil.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“i inhale deeply,
drinking the warmth in the scent of mountain sunshine,
a warmth that smells of freshly turned soil and clean laundry baking in the sun.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“This has always been our fate,” she says. “Simply to endure,” she says, “is to triumph.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“A son will always be a son, they say. But a girl is like a goat. Good as long as she gives you milk and butter. But not worth crying over when it's time to make a stew.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“Auntie says that in the city, people gather and pay money to see beautiful women and handsome men put on a show. The people in the show are called movie stars.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“This is also the season when the women drink the blue-black juice of the marking nut tree to do away with the babies in their wombs—the ones who would be born only to be buried next season.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“At night, low hearths will send up wispy curls of smoke fragrant with a dozen dinners, and darkness will clothe the land.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“In the evening, the brilliant yellow pumpkin blossoms will close, drunk on sunshine, while the milky white jasmine will open their slender throats and sip the chill Himalayan air.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“I do not know if it is hunger.
or Envy.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“Now that Gita is gone, to work as a maid for a wealthy woman in the city, her family has a tiny glass sun that hangs from a wire in the middle of their ceiling, a new set of pots for Gita's mother, a pair of spectacles for her father, a brocaded wedding dress for her older sister, and school fees for her little brother.

Inside Gita's family hut, it is daytime at night. But for me, it feels like nighttime even in the brightest sun without my friend.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“And so I consider a world so ugly that a child would be maimed for life to fetch an extra rupee or two. And another world full of brides and marigolds, rain machines and white horses.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“trying to clutch a handful of fog. Trying to forget, like trying to hold back the monsoon.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“I nod yes-no-yes-no and run back to Ama, afraid to tell her about this new auntie who smells of amber and jasmine and possibility.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“Four other babies were born between me and my brother. There are no notches for them.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold

“A son will always be a son, they say. But a girl is like a goat. Good as long as she gives you milk and butter. But not worth crying over when it’s time to make a stew.”
― Patricia McCormick, Sold