The Water and the Blood Quotes

“The thought came to me like a revelation of sorts, that all the world would be better if people were blind. Everyone. Or if we could always have a huge war or something to work against, so that people could just sing and eat fudge in their living rooms with any-one they wanted to.”
― Nancy E. Turner, The Water and the Blood

“I was sorting stamps in the slotted drawer at the post office when Garnelle Fielding came in to send a little package to Wilbur. She said she’d gone and signed up for the WAFS, and her mother and daddy drove her down to Sweetwater to take a test at Avenger Field, where the government was training hundreds and hundreds of women to be pilots. Trouble was, she didn’t pass her physical because they said she was too short and too thin for the service. Her mother rushed her to a doctor in Toullange the next day and tried to get him to write her a letter so she could join the navy instead, but he wouldn’t do it. He told her the service was no place for a girl, and she’d be better off to wait home for someone brave to come marry her. Garnelle hung around until four o’clock when my hours were up, then walked with me to my house. “You should have seen my mother,” she said. “Better yet, you should have heard her. She fussed and fumed the whole way home about how women in her family had fought in every war this country has ever had, right up from loading muskets in the Revolution to she herself driving a staff car in North Carolina during the Great War. I tell you, she would have made a better recruiter than any of those movie star speeches I’ve ever heard. My mother doesn’t sell kisses in a low-cut basque. She preaches pure patriotism like an evangelist in a tent revival. If she’d had a tambourine, we could have stopped the car and held a meeting.” We laughed. “I’m still mad, though,” she said.”
― Nancy E. Turner, The Water and the Blood

“Trouble was, the string tethering it to the ground was what kept the kite flying. Without its connection it would never stay aloft.”
― Nancy E. Turner, The Water and the Blood

“Stay outside, looking in. See those two poor people. Sad girl. Sad boy. Sadder than a movie, two people parting. My heart was behind a huge concrete dam with no gates, no opening, not even a hairline crack. On this side those people only look sad. They feel no pain. On this side.”
― Nancy E. Turner, The Water and the Blood

“Or were we all only part of each other's lives for a moment, putting down our swords long enough to win a war against a common enemy? Would we be friends if we'd met any other way?”
― Nancy E. Turner, The Water and the Blood

“Maggy said.”
― Nancy E. Turner, The Water and the Blood

“to my room.   Sheriff John Moultrie blew through his teeth and pursed lips, making a sound more akin to a steaming teapot than a whistle. The tune was “On the Road to Alabam’,” a melody he’d picked up from watching gangs of gandy dancers as a child; he’d forgotten the words, but the ditty remained part of his grain.”
― Nancy E. Turner, The Water and the Blood