The Guest Book Quotes

“Wars, plagues, names upon tombs tell us only what happened. But history lies in the cracks between.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“Because people are people. Evie fixed her eyes on him. People have complicated lives. Lives that don't necessarily fall so cleanly into black-and-white choices - people are blind, but still well-intended, and see as far as they can.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“A life can change in a single moment, and from there you simply move forward.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“matter how well you take care of the dying, no matter if you sit beside them every minute, every day—in the end they must go, and you stay.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“Wars, plagues, names upon tombs tell us only what happened. But history lies in the cracks in between. In the inexplicable, invisible turns and decisions. A person saying no instead of yes. …It is not that they had lived…but how.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“Then the ice on the black pathways through the park fixed an unreflecting gaze upward month after month, the cold unwavering through what should have been spring, so that even in April, in the Bowery in New York City, the braziers still glowed on street corners, and a man trying to warm his hands could watch the firelight picked up and carried in the windows above his head and imagine the glow traveling all the way along the avenues, square by square above the streets, all the way uptown and into the warm apartments of those who, pausing on the threshold to turn off the light, left their rooms and descended in woolens and furs, grumbling about the cold—good god, when will it end?—until it turned without fanfare one morning in May, and spring let loose at last.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“There was no good name for this spot. Evie, who had shot like an arrow from school into life, who had never wavered, who had seen clear right from the start where she wanted to get to, had lately found herself more and more in the brambles. Somehow, here she was, no longer certain where she was going. Or even if she wanted to get there.

The jobs had been won, the beds made, the dishes washed, the children sprouted. The wheel had stopped, and now what? Where, for instance, was the story of a middle-aged orphan with the gray streak in her hair, the historian who had rustled thirteenth-century women's lives out of fugitive pages, who believed more than most that there was no such thing as the certainty of a plot in the story of a life, in fact who taught this to students year in and year our, and yet who found herself lately longing, above all else for just that? Longing, against reason, for some kind of clear direction, for the promise of a pattern. For this relief--she pulled against the shoulder strap of her satchel--the unbearable relief of an omniscient narrator.

Adolescence, she reflected, pushing open the classroom door with a kind of savage glee, had nothing on this.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“She was an historian; the past was her butter and bread. But, she thought as she made her way tot he bathroom and turned on the taps, nothing had readied her for the gentle persistent feeling growing stronger through this month, a steady rain in the back of her mind, that there was something she was missing, that she had failed somehow, that there had been a turn, back there in the road of her life, a trailhead, an opening she'd barrelled right past. Somewhere back there had been the right route, the way through, and she had missed it.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“As a girl, it had been firmly set down that one ought never speak until one was spoken to, and when one did, one ought not speak of anything that might provoke or worry. One referred to the limb of the table, not the leg, the white meat on the chicken, not the breast. Good manners were the foundations of civilization. One knew precisely with whom one sat in a room based entirely on how well they behaved, and in what manner. Forks and knives were placed at the ten-twenty on one's plate when one was finished eating, One ought to walk straight and keep one's hands to oneself when one s poke, least one be taken for an Italian or Jew. A woman was meant to tend a child, a garden, or a conversation. A woman ought to know how to mind the temperature in a room, adding a little heat in a well-timed question, or cool a warm temper with the suggestion of another drink, a bowl of nuts, and a smile.

What Kitty had learned at Miss Porter's School---handed down from Sarah Porter through the spinsters teaching there, themselves the sisters of Yale men who handed down the great words, Truth. Verity. Honor--was that your brothers and your husbands and your sons will lead, and you will tend., You will watch and suggest, guide and protect. You will carry the torch forward, and all to the good.

There was the world. And one fixed an eye keenly on it. One learned its history; one understood the causes of its wars. One debated and, gradually, a picture emerged of mankind over the centuries; on understood the difference between what was good and what was right. On understood that men could be led to evil, against the judgment of their better selves. Debauchery. Poverty of spirit. This was the explanation for so many unfortunate ills--slavery, for instance. The was the reason. Men, individual men, were not at fault. They had to be taught. Led. Shown by example what was best. Unfairness, unkindness could be addressed. Queitly. Patiently.. Without a lot of noisy attention.

Noise was for the poorly bred.

If one worried, if one were afraid, if one doubted--one kept it to oneself. One looked for the good, and one found it. The woman found it, the woman pointed it out, and the man tucked it in his pocket, heartened. These were the rules.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“every life had at its center a beginning that was not birth, a moment when the catch on the lock in one’s life opens, and out it comes, starting forward.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“But it is a mistake to think news happens somewhere else. To others. The news is always about you.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“But it is a mistake to think news happens somewhere else. To others. The news is always about you. You must simply fit yourself in it. You must see how—you must be vigilant.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“There is the crime and there is silence.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“And why just then, why that moment was the moment in which she understood quite suddenly her own death, she couldn't say. Simply, she saw how he would miss her.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“But I do know that all the chickies come home to roost in middle age.
Yeah?
You can spend your life shooing them away, locking the door, making the roof too shiny for a perch, too slippery; you can chop down all the trees around the house, never come home, keep moving, keep shifting so they don't come, they don't settle; you can sell your house. All the way through your twenties, your thirties, your forties you can do this, and then whammo, you hit your fifties, and there they come, there little fluttering, their hoo-hoos, the faint scratching of their claws upon your roof. Settling down, settling in ---”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“No matter how well you take care of the dying, no matter if you sit beside them every minute, every day—in the end they must go, and you stay. And you wave them off. You lie.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“Metaphor, Evie thought as she stepped off the curb as the light changed, was for the young. Or, at any rate, for the younger than she.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“She went to the church to sit in the cave of stone, filled with the voices of strangers. Murmurs coming through the air, bowling in the ceiling and sifting down with the speckled greens and blues, the deep dark red of the stained glass at the end of the nave. She sat in the hard wooden pew and waited for the hymns. And when the singing started, she could weep. She went to the church to open her mouth and feel her heart again, constricted, struggling, banging against her throat, the tears there in the place of words, her voice struggling out in the vast air, stopped by grief.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“Time and quiet, everyone counseled, would help. Best not to mention it. Best not to dwell on it, his mother had said. It was a terrible accident. It must have been hot. Windows were open at the time. And time would heal. Somethings were better left unsaid.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“Ogden Moss Milton Nov. 11, 1899–Oct. 4, 1980 Katherine Milton May 4, 1905–Sept. 10, 1988 Ogden Moss Milton Jr. March 17, 1930–Aug. 22, 1959 Evelyn Milton Pratt April 18, 1937–March 24, 2017”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“Where are the Jews in Henry James?” Paul challenged, looking up at him with a little smile. “Last I checked there were no Jews in Henry James.” Daryl was dry. “And why not?” Paul answered. “There were Jews everywhere around him. In London, in Venice. Certainly in New York—” “Go on.” “And the blacks in Nathaniel Hawthorne? Where are they?” Paul pushed. “That wasn’t his subject,” Daryl retorted. “Exactly.” Paul nodded. “Precisely my point. There are no blacks in Hawthorne because he’d have to see them as real enough, human enough, for him to imagine them, put them in the story.” “Oh, for god’s sake, Paul,” Evie pushed back. “Of course he understood them to be human beings—” “Really? Then where are they?” Evie didn’t answer. “Everyone you can’t see on the surface. That’s the story. But they are buried, implicit.” Paul didn’t miss a beat. “That’s what the stumble stones remind us. We were here.” “And?” Paul turned to Daryl. “What if a place could remember what had happened? What if a place could speak? What if that memory tripped us up in our daily lives?” “Okay.” Daryl looked at him. “Go on.” “What if we had said what we had done here?” Paul went on. “Like the Germans. What if this country put down a paving stone for every slave—their names, the places where they arrived, the spot where they were sold—all over the South, in every marketplace in the South? What if this country put what happened in the past right under our feet and said, All right. Look. Look”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“Nothing is inevitable; everything is tangential, particular—human.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“was a team player only until he was handed the ball. And then he simply had to run with it. The sort of man who could not hand it off, as he ought to, the sort of man who would risk the game to score a point. The wrong sort.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“He believed in the people on the ship, believed they could steer clear of what was wrong. That was the evil these days laid bare, surely—this sustained, precious belief that everyone could see it all clearly, the hope that someone would come to stop it, that there would be people who could stop it, doomed them instead.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“Wars, plagues, names upon tombs tell us only what happened. But history lies in the cracks between. In the inexplicable, invisible turns—when someone puts a hand down, pushes open one particular gate, and steps through. A man saying no instead of yes, two hands grasped on a dark street.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“Ogden had understood that every life had at its center a beginning that was not birth, a moment when the catch on the lock in one’s life opens, and out it comes, starting forward.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“That moment is the one we still repeat here, over and over again, the ordinary, everyday wickedness of turning away. The American primal scene.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“What if a place could remember what had happened? What if a place could speak? What if that memory tripped us up in our daily lives?”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“would”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book

“We want to be deceived. There is bread again. There are jobs.”
― Sarah Blake, The Guest Book