A Solitary Blue Quotes

“He felt — washed clean, healed. He felt if he could just live here he would be all right. He felt as if he had never been alive before. He felt at ease with himself and as if he had come home to a place where he could be himself, without hiding anything, without pretending even to himself. He felt, thinking his way back up the beach, as if his brain had just woken up from some long sleep, and it wanted to run along beside the waves, to see how far and fast it could go.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“When Jeff Greene was in second grade, seven and a half years old, he got home from school one Tuesday afternoon in early March, and found a note from his mother, saying that she had gone away and would not be coming back.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“Poor Melody, he thought again, because she saw love as something that gets you what you want. She didn’t understand at all.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“He felt […] as if he’d just gotten a letter, out of the blue, from somebody wise enough to know the truth, from everybody, or at least everybody who mattered.

“Hello,” the letter said. “Hello, Jeff Greene, I’ve been watching you and I like you and I want to know you better. This is just to say I’m glad you’re alive in the world.” The list of signatures, he thought, would include his own.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“I don’t know what she told you, but I never was sorry I’d married her or loved her because of you. You always made a difference, made a real difference, from the very beginning. I always knew that, inside me, but I didn’t bother to learn how to show you. I’m sorry, Jeff, I should have taken the trouble.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“She went on and on, until Jeff had a sense of family spreading out around them endlessly, and only an hour later, when she was lost in reminiscences, did he understand that the names she mentioned, the people she spoke of, were most of them long ago dead. The family spread not out and around, but back, back into time.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“He knew it was perfect, and perfectly beautiful. He thought about how much she would like it. When he thought like that, happiness swelled up warm within him.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“they turned around to head down — and Jeff crawled onto the deck to pull down the jib — he saw a blue heron standing on a little muddy point of land across the creek. He pointed and Dicey followed his eyes. The blue raised its flat head to look at them. Its feet were in the water, its feathers slightly ruined as if by a recent annoyance. Jeff watched the bird, waiting for it to take off, anticipating the squawk with which it would trumpet its disapprovals. But the blue seemed not to find them threatening. It stared across the creek at them, then turned its back on them in a stately gesture of dismissal. Jeff knew the bird knew they were there. But, from all you could tell, the bird had never noticed them. It raised its head to look out across the marsh, unconcerned, solitary, ignoring them with great determination. Dicey’s low voice told him to pull down the mainsail, and he did. When he had it gathered around the boom, he looked back to the bird. The great blue still stood there, its back still to them. It wasn’t going to let the suspicion that they were there chase it off of its fishing territory. Jeff wrapped the sheet around the loosely furled mainsail and went up to the bow to fend off. Dicey concentrated on maneuvering the boat, propelled now only by its own weight. Her hand rested on the tiller as she waited patiently for the sluggish hull to respond to her directions. The landing was perfect. Jeff held onto a piling with one hand while he looped a clove hitch around it. Then he looked back at Dicey. “You know who that bird reminds me of? You.” Her expression changed, and he didn’t know what he’d said wrong. Then he saw that the change was caused by Dicey trying to hold back laughter. “I was thinking how much it was like you,” she told him.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“When she asked him to play a song while she finished, he had to strum chords for a while and pretend to be tuning up until he settled down. He didn’t want her to see how unsettled he’d been by the whole thing. How unsettled he still was. He had thought he was the fisherman, but he saw now — She had pronged him, with a single stroke, pronged him through the heart and he was caught. Just like with Melody, caught. But this wasn’t Melody, Dicey wasn’t. And besides, he didn’t feel pronged, he felt — overwhelmed, out of breath, breathless.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“He had locked her out of his mind and out of his life. She could no longer get through to him, to make him feel the way she used to. He just wanted to forget about her and the way she played on his feelings — the same way she used to play on the guitar, he thought, remembering for a minute. He knew now just how badly she had played the guitar.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“I wouldn’t like to meet her again,” Jeff said, “and not in a dark alley.” He’d need to be tougher than he ever could be, and it wasn’t just this one old lady, it was most people in the world. Jeff felt as if he’d been keeping a secret from himself and had come around a dark inner corner to rediscover it. He felt shaky, but as if he’d learned something. Probably it was good for him. He thought it was. It wasn’t good for him to get confident; just like he’d been confident about Melody. It was when you got confident you got taken by surprise and really banged around.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“If he was a ghost in the life he remembered, Jeff thought, he was also a ghost in his present life, just the same way. Except, in all the fourteen years, just a couple of times. With Melody that first summer he had felt alive. On the beach on the island. And when he played the guitar. Most of the time, he thought, he practiced not being anybody. If you weren’t anybody then nobody could — what? Hurt you or leave you behind? Make you unhappy? But then they couldn’t make you happy either, could they? If you played it safe, then you kept safe. Jeff figured he was pretty good at keeping safe — he didn’t even look in mirrors because he didn’t want to see Melody’s eyes. But one result of that was that Jeff didn’t know anything about himself. And he thought, sitting in the little boat, alone on the creek, alone with the creek and the sky and the marshes, that he might want to know more.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“It was almost as if he’d been a ghost in all those rooms, all those days, a ghost in his own life.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“To himself, he called it a safe place, and when they were finally settled in at the end of July, living in the three-room house where windows gave out over the water and woods and sky, he knew he had been right.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“He made his way down to the creek, down a five-foot muddy bank to a band of sand too narrow to lie down on. He had to force his way through honeysuckle vines and the branches of low wild cherry trees, so his approach was clumsy, noisy. As he slid to his feet, a great blue heron croaked loudly just off to his left and at the same time rose out and flew away — complaining — to land on the far side of the creek. From there, the bird stared at Jeff. Jeff stared back, not moving, except for the smile on his mouth. The bird decided Jeff was harmless and paced slowly upstream, its attention on the shallow water where prey might be found. The long stilty legs, the long curved neck, the awkward perfect body moved inland, away from Jeff. He watched it. He watched it not find anything to eat, watched it come to a rest and blend into the stillness of a dead tree that had fallen out into the creek. The two men were still inside when Jeff rejoined them. The Professor looked at his face and said, “You like it.” Jeff nodded. “I saw a blue heron.” “They’re common around here,” the agent said. “You-all birdwatchers?” But the Professor remembered and understood what Jeff meant. “You take that as a sign from the gods?” Jeff nodded.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“Jeff had made himself a place, inside himself, a kind of tower room, round, without any windows. In that room, he had locked his memory of the beach on the island, all the memories from the day hours and from the night hours. He had discovered how to step inside that room and slide the curved door closed and bolt it across.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“when he sat in the rowboat again, the oars ready but not yet dipped into the water to take him away from the island, Jeff looked back. He didn’t see the busy land crabs nor the overgrown interior; he saw the beach, knowing it was there just beyond sight, keeping the sight of it clear in his inner eye. He splashed the oars into the water. Behind him, a great blue squawked — Jeff turned his head quickly. The heron rose up from the marsh grass, croaking its displeasure at the disturbance, at Jeff, at all of the world. Its legs dragged briefly in the water before it rose free to swoop over Jeff’s head with a whirring of powerful wings. It landed again on the far side of the ruined dock, to stand on stiltlike legs with its long beak pointed toward the water. Just leave me alone, the heron seemed to be saying. Jeff rowed away, down the quiet creek. The bird did not watch him go.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue

“It wasn't the worst time when Melody left me," the Professor said. "The worst time was the years before. Because I didn't know I couldn't hate anybody that much; it was like she'd stuck a sword into me, one of those Japanese samurai swords, do you know the kind I mean? Heavy and razor sharp-and she'd stuck it in me and then she was...pushing it around." His hand rested on his stomach, remembering. "I couldn't get free from the feelings. I didn't know how frightened I could be, all the time. But whenever we had to go out together, she'd smile at me and talk to me and listen and look at me the way she did-and I wanted to hit her," he said, his voice low and ashamed.
Jeff let his head down to rest on his fists.
"When I found out how many lies she was telling me, I finally realized that she had always lied to me. About my lectures. About boyfriends; and even after she knew I knew, she'd still lie about it. I hated her. Or the bills she ran up, without asking, without telling; then she'd say she'd taken care of them but she just-ignore them. I know I looked all right to other people-maybe more of a dry stick than usual, maybe even more of boring than usual-but inside I was knotted up, all the time, because I hated her so much, and I hated myself, and I was scared."
Jeff looked up at his father.
"I didn't think she'd do that to you, Jeff," the Professor said. "But she did, didn't she."
Jeff nodded. He knew he was crying, but he didn't know what to do about it. Neither did the Professor. He just sat and waited, until Jeff got up to blow his nose.
"It was the lies," the Professor said. "They were what really scared me. Even now, if I think about her-and the kinds of things she says....I don't know what she told you, but I never was sorry I'd married her or loved her because of you. You always made a difference, made a real difference, from the very beginning. I always knew that, inside me, but I didn't bother to learn how to show you. I'm sorry, Jeff, I should have taken the trouble.”
― Cynthia Voigt, A Solitary Blue