A Piece of the World Quotes

“The older I get, the more I believe that the greatest kindness is acceptance.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“What she wants most - what she truly yearns for - is what any of us want: to be seen.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“It is a terrible thing to find the love of your life.... You know too well what you're missing when it's gone.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“It's painful to hold out hope for the things that once brought you joy. You have to find ways to make yourself forget.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“This life of ours can feel an awful lot like waiting.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“There she is, that girl, on a planet of grass. Her wants are simple: to tilt her face to the sun and feel its warmth. To clutch the earth beneath her fingers. To escape from and return to the house she was born in. To see her life from a distance, as clear as a photograph, as mysterious as a fairy tale. This is a girl who has lived through broken dreams and promises. Still lives. Will always live on that hillside, at the center of a world that unfolds all the way to the edges of the canvas. Her people are witches and persecutors, adventurers and homebodies, dreamers and pragmatists. Her world is both circumscribed and boundless, a place where the stranger at the door may hold a key to the rest of her life. What she wants most—what she truly yearns for—is what any of us want: to be seen. And look. She is.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“This is like telling a person who has leapt off a cliff to be careful. I am already in midair.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“(How quickly, with a slight twist in perception, do people’s strengths become flaws!)”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“That man would have chipped away at your heart bit by bit until there was nothing left. It may have been bruised, but at least it's whole.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find...”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“You can live for a long time inside the shell you were born in. But one day it'll become too small."
"Then what?" I ask.
"Well, then you'll have to find a larger shell to live in."
I consider this for a moment. "What if it's too small but you still want to live there?"
She sighs. "Gracious, child, what a question. I suppose you'll either have to be brave and find a new home or you'll have to live inside a broken shell.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“I ... am left with the lingering feeling that the places we go in our minds to find comfort have little to do with where our bodies go.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“To get it all done I have to dim my brain, turn it down by notches like the flat-turn knob on a gas lantern, leaving only a nub of flame.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“I am acutely aware that like a slip of paper in the wind, something in his nature eludes my grasp.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“Some memories are realities and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.” Maybe so, I think. Maybe my memories of sweeter times are vivid enough, and present enough, to overcome the disappointments that followed. And to sustain me through the rest.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“It is a terrible thing to find the love of your life, Christina,” she says. “You know too well what you’re missing when it’s gone.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“Something in his manner makes me want to confide things to him I've never told anyone. Even painful things, shameful things. I didn't know how badly I wanted to share them.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“Something inexorable seeds itself in the place of your origin. You can never escape the bonds of family history, no matter how far you travel.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“The most important qualities a human can possess are an iron will and a persevering spirit,” Mamey”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“It feels as if my life is moving forward at two separate speeds, one at the usual pace, with its predictable rhythms and familiar inhabitants, and the other rushing ahead, a blur of color and sound and sensation. It's clear to me now that for twenty years I have gone through the motions of each day like a dumb animal, neither daring to hope for a different kind of life nor even knowing enough to desire one.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“Though I lived with this man for my entire life, I never really knew him. He was like a frozen bay himself, I think—an icy crust, layers deep, above roiling water.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“The house must be a sanctuary.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“All were given one chance to step into a happily ever after- or at least it must have seemed that way. But was it the prince who attracted them, or merely the opportunity to escape?”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“I think of what Mamey told me long ago: there are many ways to love and be loved. Too bad it's taken most of a lifetime for me to understand what that means.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“You're not shy. You just like who you like.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“If you really want to know me, I said, we'll have to start with the witches.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“think, again, of my mother opening her front door to a Swedish sailor, the stuff of fairy tales: Rapunzel letting down her hair, Cinderella sliding her foot into the glass slipper, Sleeping Beauty awaiting a kiss. All were given one chance to step into a happily ever after—or at least it must’ve seemed that way. But was it the prince who attracted them, or merely the opportunity for escape?”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“Some memories are realities and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again." Maybe so, I think. Maybe my memories of sweeter times are vivid enough, and present enough, to overcome the disappointments that followed. And to sustain me through the rest.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“There are many ways to be crippled, I've learned over the years, many forms of paralysis.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World

“Do our natures dictate the choices we make, I wonder, or do we choose to live a certain way because of circumstances beyond our control? Perhaps these questions are impossible to tease apart because, like a tangle of seaweed on a rock, they are connected at the root.”
― Christina Baker Kline, A Piece of the World