Miracle Creek Quotes

“In a way, he supposed, it was inevitable for immigrants to become child versions of themselves, stripped of their verbal fluency and, with it, a layer of their competence and maturity.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“But that was the way life worked. Every human being was the result of a million different factors mixing together -- one of a million sperm arriving at the egg at exactly a certain time; even a millisecond off, and another entirely different person would result. Good things and bad--every friendship and romance formed, every accident, every illness--resulted from the conspiracy of hundreds of little things, in and of themselves inconsequential.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“That was the thing about lies: they demanded commitment. Once you lied, you had to stick to your story.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“Good things and bad—every friendship and romance formed, every accident, every illness—resulted from the conspiracy of hundreds of little things, in and of themselves inconsequential.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“to Americans, verbiage was an inherent good, akin to kindness or courage. They loved words—the more, the longer, and more quickly said, the smarter and more impressive.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“We all have thoughts that shame us.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“He’d learned early on—fights in a marriage were like seesaws. You needed to balance blame carefully. You pile too much blame on one person, let them thunk down to the ground, they’re liable to stand and walk away, send you flying down on your ass.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“Tragedies don’t inoculate you against further tragedies, and misfortune doesn’t get sprinkled out in fair proportions; bad things get hurled at you in clumps and batches, unmanageable and messy. How”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“No one measured the number of hours spent holding your baby in the first year of life versus the remaining years, the dramatic dissipation of intimacy- the sensual familiarity of nursing, holding, comforting- as children pass from infancy and toodlerhood to the teens. You lived in the same house, but the intimacy was gone, replaced by aloofness, with splashes of annoyance. Like an addiction, you could go for years without it, but you never forgot it, never stopped missing it, and when you got a dab of it, like now, you craved it more and wanted to gorge on it.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“Having a special-needs child didn’t just change you; it transmuted you, transported you to a parallel world with an altered gravitational axis.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“Americans were so proud of things being a few hundred years old, as if things being old were a value in and of itself. (Of course, this philosophy did not extend to people.)”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“those fanatics who gun down abortion doctors in the name of saving lives.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“this breed of people who used manners to cover up unfriendliness the way people used perfume to cover up body odor”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“Good things and bad—every friendship and romance formed, every accident, every illness—resulted from the conspiracy of hundreds of little things, in and of themselves inconsequential”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“simultaneously heavier and lighter. Han. There was no English equivalent, no translation. It was an overwhelming sorrow and regret, a grief and yearning so deep it pervades your soul—but with a sprinkling of resilience, of hope.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“PTSD they called it - Americans has such a penchant for reducing phrases to acronyms; saving seconds was so important to them”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“Autism isn't a defect, just a different way of being.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“Han. There was no English equivalent, no translation. It was an overwhelming sorrow and regret, a grief and yearning so deep it pervades your soul—but with a sprinkling of resilience, of hope.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“Every human being was the result of a million different factors mixing together - one of a million sperm arriving at the egg at exactly a certain time; even a millisecond off and another entirely different person would result. Good things and bad - every friendship and romance formed, every accident, every illness - resulted from the conspiracy of hundreds of little things, in and of themselves inconsequential.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“listen, can I pay you next week?” Pause. “I did get it, but my dad found out, he went totally berserko. I apparently”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“We all have thoughts that shame us...but if that were to actually happen, that'd be unbearable”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“Looking at Main Street’s row of shops reminded Young of her favorite market in Seoul, its legendary produce row—spinach green, pepper red, beet purple, persimmon orange. From its description, she would’ve thought it garish, but it was the opposite”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“But that was the way life worked. Every human being was the result of a million different factors mixing together—one of a million sperm arriving at the egg at exactly a certain time; even a millisecond off, and another entirely different person would result. Good things and bad—every friendship and romance formed, every accident, every illness—resulted from the conspiracy of hundreds of little things, in and of themselves inconsequential.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“Miracle Creek didn't look like a place where miracles took place, unless you counted the miracle of people living there for years without going insane from bordem.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“Matt blinked - how long did that take? A tenth of a second? A hundredth? - then, where Henry's face had been, there was fire. Face, then blink, then fire. No, faster thant that. Face, blink, fire. Face-blink-fire. Facefire.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“There's something <..> about the sounds that other people make. <...> creaking upstairs, humming a tune, watching TV, clanging dishes - that blot away your loneliness. <..> Their abscence - the total silence - becomes palpable.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek

“as if putting the brash colors together subdued each one, so the overall feel was elegant and lovely.”
― Angie Kim, Miracle Creek