The Circus In Winter Quotes

“At the college where I teach, I'm surrounded by circus people. We aren't tightrope walkers or acrobats. We don't breathe fire or swallow swords. We're gypsies, moving wherever there's work to be found. Our scrapbooks and photo albums bear witness to our vagabond lives: college years, grad-school years, instructor-mill years, first-job years. In between each stage is a picture of old friends helping to fill a truck with boxes and furniture. We pitch our tents, and that place becomes home for a while. We make families from colleagues and students, lovers and neighbors. And when that place is no longer working, we don't just make do. We move on to the place that's next. No place is home. Every place is home. Home is our stuff. As much as I love the Cumberland Valley at twilight, I probably won't live there forever, and this doesn't really scare me. That's how I know I'm circus people. ”
― Cathy Day, The Circus In Winter: A Debut Literary Novel of Family, Love, and Small-Town Dreams

“When I was little, my mother told me there are basically two kinds of people in the world: town people and circus people. The kind who stay are town people, and the kind who leave are circus people.”
― Cathy Day, The Circus In Winter: A Debut Literary Novel of Family, Love, and Small-Town Dreams

“Maybe every town in America transmits that radio signal, and on certain nights when the weather and the frequency are just right, we can all hear our hometowns talking softly to us in the back of our dreams.”
― Cathy Day, The Circus in Winter

“It's taken me a long time to figure out one very simple thing: The world is made up of hometowns. It's just as hard to leave a city block in Brooklyn or a suburb of Chicago as it is to leave a small town in Indiana. And just because it was hard to leave Linden Avenue in Flatbush or the Naperville city limits or Lima doesn't mean you can't ever go back. I wish I knew where my mother was so I could tell her that. My mother always told me, Marry yourself first, Jenny. And I did. She also said, When you leave, don't look back. And I tried not to, but for some reason”
― Cathy Day, The Circus in Winter