Winter Loon Quotes

“Sometimes it’s easier to build something new than it is to fix something broken.”
― Susan Bernhard, Winter Loon

“You need to think of it this way. Each new day is like a new life. More chances to make good and be honorable. That sun goes down, it can take sorrow with it, leave it on the other side if we let it. But you, you hold onto things.”
― Susan Bernhard, Winter Loon

“I think about that, about the boy I was and my drowned mother. What did I know, really? Her love for me was deep and frantic. And the desperation of her dying the way she did was keen, sharp like the blade she left behind, like the loon’s black bill. I was not able to put my thoughts together right then, not for years, that the ice had closed in on my mother long before she went out onto Bright Lake.”
― Susan Bernhard, Winter Loon

“hope was too heavy. It’s easier to carry nothing.”
― Susan Bernhard, Winter Loon

“She softened, allowed me to see her grief. Tears pooled in her eyes but didn’t fall. Instead they seemed to recede, like the cascade went down her throat and into her belly. The moment was deep and fleeting and gone.”
― Susan Bernhard, Winter Loon

“I could almost see time lagging behind, unable to catch up with the quick work of a thing bound to happen. The ice groaned and gasped, opened its frozen maw in a hibernated yawn. My mother broke through the teeth of ice like she was dropped from the seat of a dunking machine.”
― Susan Bernhard, Winter Loon

“Not long ago Aveline got a call from the county sheriff for Index, Washington. Local fishermen found a drifter by the name of Moss Ballot dead on the banks of the Skykomish River. There were no signs of struggle, only whiskey in his blood and traces of river in his lungs, likely from having fallen face-first and taken his last breaths underwater. He'd set up camp in the trees under a tarp. It seemed he'd been there for a while, living off fish and canned beans. There wasn't much worth keeping, according to the sheriff. He did say that inside the wax duffel bag there was a diary, the one I'd given to him, it turns out. Inside it were written the words *For my children Wes and Annaclaire in care of Aveline Blue, Burden Falls, Montana*. There was one sentence, the start of a story never written but told nonetheless: *I lose everything*. The rest of the pages were blank.”
― Susan Bernhard, Winter Loon

“I wanted him to leave and to hold onto me. I wanted him to shut the hell up and to tell me I’d done all I could. I wanted his comfort. I got his pain.”
― Susan Bernhard, Winter Loon

“Wisdom is not gained through vengeance.”
― Susan Bernhard, Winter Loon

“me that I’d had them down around my hips the night before, reminded me”
― Susan Bernhard, Winter Loon

“This is what happens when too much time passes. You end up with so many questions that need answers, but there’s no time to ask. Wait much longer and they don’t matter anymore. Then you’re left with, Do you miss me? Are you happy? Wait too long and there’s not even that left to say.”
― Susan Bernhard, Winter Loon

“So go, why don’t you? See if I care.” “You don’t mean that,” he said. But I did. I wanted him to leave and to hold onto me. I wanted him to shut the hell up and to tell me I’d done all I could. I wanted his comfort. I got his pain.”
― Susan Bernhard, Winter Loon

“White blankets and sterile walls became the ice twisting along the serpentine lakeshore.”
― Susan Bernhard, Winter Loon

“I let my eyes rest again on the craggy spot, dark as spilled ink and barely out of my reach, where the ice had given way and the hungry lake had swallowed my mother whole.”
― Susan Bernhard, Winter Loon