Brood Quotes

“Life is the ongoing effort to live. Some people make it look easy. Chickens do not.”
― Jackie Polzin, Brood

“When a chicken arrives at a new home, it is home. The things a chicken wants are the things a chicken needs. This is too simple of an arrangement for the human mind to grasp.”
― Jackie Polzin, Brood

“Clean is not a natural state. Of all the circumstances that may randomly occur, cleanliness is not one of them. Cleanliness is a temporary state, inseparable from the act of cleaning. This is never more clear than in the privacy of one’s home. A single non-cleaning person will face this truth eventually.”
― Jackie Polzin, Brood: A Novel

“A certain quality of chance encounter has always affected me this way, exposing the state of things to be desperate and inescapable: spotted egg on pavement amid its own slight spill, shrine at a road sign, blue memory snapping like the tail of a stuck kite.”
― Jackie Polzin, Brood

“Feathers belong to a family of natural luminescence. Included in this group spanning past, present, and future life are fish scales and butterfly wings and the skin of bright berries as the sun passes through them, the glowing eye of an animal when lit at night, the interior of the shell of an abalone, the intricate glitter of the flower of a violet. The leaf of a begonia shatters light when struck with sun, green as viewed from above or red as viewed from below; so do the leaves of a hosta appear to flicker at some point each cloudless day. While seated on the bus, I have seen the back of the neck of a young boy sparkle in this way, so perhaps we, too, are part of the family of glitter and light.”
― Jackie Polzin, Brood

“I never feel smaller than when I am filled with doubt, such a small, small feeling, it’s a marvel it can fill anything at all. Filled with doubt I shrink until I can hardly move, can do nothing but wait and see what happens.”
― Jackie Polzin, Brood: A Novel