How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House Quotes

“You understand that if you must learn to love a man, he is probably not the man you should be loving.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“What are secrets but things we want to forget? Why then would we keep acquaintance of others who remember them?”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“In those tunnels, you understand that you do not learn to love a man, because for the right man there is no need for the learning, the love is the most natural thing in the world. You understand that if you must learn to love a man, he is probably not the man you should be loving.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“She did not understand that for the women of her lineage, a marriage meant a murder in one form or the other.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“How could Wilma not expect this child to look for her mother’s humming, to be drawn like a moth to a flame to anyone who wished not only to retrieve this name, but to dust it off, shake it out, try it on with her? From the moment they met, Adan had called her no other name but Lala, had sung her name in every tone he could think of to see if she would recognize it, would remember exactly the notes her mother intended her to. It was one of the reasons she had loved him.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“Dying, finds Lala, is something like surfing a rainbow with very bright colors in all shapes and forms, dancing out of a point that is perpetually spilling them so that you are forever traveling forward on swaths of billowing reds and blues but never really getting anywhere, just forever traveling toward a tiny hole where all the color originates and where it ends. She wonders whether this is how her daughter must have felt when she was dying—the glorious, giddy kaleidoscope hurtling toward a hole that inexplicably remains the same distance away. Lala thinks that if, perhaps, to die means the eternal roller coaster of color, the giddy dance on blues and greens and reds and purples, then—possibly—to kill could be a kindness.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“This truth that only the girls who dare to enter the tunnels are able to find out.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“She will tell her, she vows, that loving a child does not come naturally, not for everyone, not even if it is a child you have birth to.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“just Wilma and Lala and Adan and his soldiers and Jacinthe”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“She would have told her that when a proposal is right, what a woman should feel, above all, is safe—like she has found a soft place for landing. She would have told her that the thudding heart and trepidation meant that this was not the marriage for her. Esme would have explained to her daughter, if she had lived, why, despite all this, she did not say no, why she had stood in the cramped bedroom she shared with a man she did not love and watched him get on one knee and present her with a box with a thin gold band crowned by the single small diamond he had slaved the better part of a year for. She would have said to her that she did not wish this for her own daughter—the responsibility of having to say yes to a man for whom this proposal was the singular objective of several months’ unrequited affection.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“She would have told her that this is not the reaction of a woman in love, for whom marriage is a natural progression of that love.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“Esme will tell her daughter that the affection of others cannot be depended upon, even if they gave birth to you. She will tell her, she vows, that loving a child does not come naturally, not for everyone.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“you understand that you do not learn to love a man, because for the right man there is no need for the learning, the love is the most natural thing in the world. You understand that if you must learn to love a man, he is probably not the man you should be loving.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“In the early nights of their marriage, after that first beating, Lala had made deals with God while her new husband snored.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“Get. To. Rass. Hole. Up!’ People lie about the first slap. Lala knows you can never trust a woman who can tell you the direction from which the fist first came, because if you are genuinely shocked that first time you are beaten, the only thing you remember is the sting. You cannot remember the direction because you were not expecting”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“Extremes of anything are bad, and the two extremes of possession – deprivation and deluge – are especially crippling to the soul.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“He does not treat oranges like a luxury costing too many dollars per bag, like something to be savored, he eats them like they are made to be devoured, without thought to where the next orange is coming from.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“Dying, finds Lala, is something like surfing a rainbow with very bright colors in all shapes and forms, dancing out of a point that is perpetually spilling them so that you are forever traveling forward on swaths of billowing reds and blues but never really getting anywhere, just forever traveling toward a tiny hole where all the color originates and where it ends.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“Lala sighs without thinking. She makes a loud sound that reminds her of tearing paper. She watches Adan’s lips stop their caress of David’s words and she sighs loudly again, for a different reason. She watches her hand jerk, sees the cup fall, the rice scatter, watches the pages of the bible flutter, sees the psalms of David submerged.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“If, by staying, she would have doomed Baby to the same life she herself had had. If perhaps, for Baby, that would have been a fate even worse than her eventual death.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“You didn’t have to do that, my man—we was just walking,” as if the punishment could be legitimately applied in some circumstances but just happened, at that instant, to be unwarranted.”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

“What are secrets but things we want to forget? Why then would we keep the acquaintance of others who remember them?”
― Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House