The Pain Tree Quotes

“When you go to that big country, Miss Katie, it have everything there. Everything a person could want in the whole wide world. But don’t get big-eye. Don’t turn wanti-wanti. Promise. You hold strain and think of them poor little ones back here that don’t have nothing. Eat for one, lest you turn into two.”
― Olive Senior, The Pain Tree

“People like me would always inherit the land, but they were the ones who already possessed the Earth.”
― Olive Senior, The Pain Tree

“People who mattered, we believed, resided in the great house. It was we who made history, a series of events unfolding with each generation. And yet, I realized now, it was in this room, Larissa’s, that I had first learnt that history is not dates or abstraction but a space where memory becomes layered and textured. What is real is what you carry around inside of you.”
― Olive Senior, The Pain Tree

“The thought came, unbidden, that only those who are born rich can afford the luxury of not wanting to own anything. We can try it on as a way of avoiding complicity. But in my heart of hearts I know my inheritance already possesses me.”
― Olive Senior, The Pain Tree

“Women like Larissa, pulled far from their homes and families by the promise of work, were not expected to grieve; their sorrow, like their true selves, remained muted and hidden.”
― Olive Senior, The Pain Tree