The Wartime Sisters Quotes

“Small children don’t let you sleep; big children don’t let you rest.”
― Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Wartime Sisters

“Ruth didn’t look up. She searched the floor for stray shards, for any broken bits she might have missed. “It means people notice you, but they never notice me. They like you better, they treat you differently, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Everyone thinks you’re special. Everyone goes out of their way to be nice to you.” “Not everyone,” Millie said, her voice low and miserable. “Not my own sister.”
― Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Wartime Sisters

“What everyone knows, not everyone can teach. Only a smart girl can do what you do.”
― Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Wartime Sisters

“Ruth's mother wore her anxiety like some women wore the wrong color lipstick-- it was far too loud, and took forever to wear off.”
― Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Wartime Sisters

“Wearing someone else's apron is like wearing someone else's shoes.”
― Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Wartime Sisters

“You should always wear a nice piece of jewelry to the cemetery, her mother liked to say. So everyone should know that you’re not dead yet.”
― Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Wartime Sisters

“Ruth almost felt sorry for him. He wasn’t the worst young man her sister had dated. But he had no education and no plans for a career. He didn’t come from money or even from a respectable family. No matter how much he liked her sister, Ruth knew their mother would never accept him.”
― Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Wartime Sisters

“Ruth was three years old when her sister was born. Like most firstborn children, Ruth assumed her younger sibling would be a miniature version of herself. She would have straight hair, brown eyes, and a soft, gentle voice. She would love books and numbers, and the two of them would be inseparable. It didn’t take long for Ruth to realize her mistake.”
― Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Wartime Sisters

“It was easy sometimes to forget about the war. Easy to let a tiny tragedy in an ordinary day eclipse the greater horror of a global calamity. Easy to let the fear of a personal confrontation obscure the vaster dread of battles halfway across the world. It was easy to forget, when men and women were dancing and orchestras were playing, that other men and women were fighting and dying. Easy, when she held a sleeping child in her arms, to forget the other children awake in places she’d never heard of, children who were hungry and frightened and cold. It was easy, much too easy, to think only of herself and the smaller war that waited on the other side of her sister’s front door.”
― Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Wartime Sisters

“I’m fine,” Millie answered, but Ruth could hear the irritation in her”
― Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Wartime Sisters

“After a childhood of bickering and a hostile adolescence, they had entered adulthood almost estranged. Was it possible that now, with so many losses behind them, they could enter a new stage of understanding and acceptance?”
― Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Wartime Sisters

“There was something in Ruth's furtive glances and in Millie's agonized avoidance that bound the two of them together in a way Arietta hadn't first noticed. There was an ache behind their smiles, a palpable longing-- the same expression her aunties used to have before her father broke his silence and finally decided to speak openly about her mother. It was then that she realized the burden the sisters shared: each had a secret she was keeping from the other.”
― Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Wartime Sisters