Servants of the Map Quotes

“I have no appetite,' she sighed. 'Not for food, not for work. Not for anything.' I looked at her and wondered what I am except appetite.”
― Andrea Barrett, Servants of the Map: Stories

“The life she'd led, each of the places she'd called home sending unexpected shoots toward the next, had made her open to almost anything.”
― Andrea Barrett, Servants of the Map: Stories

“It was through Peter that she first understood that the world existed before her, without her. For a few days she could not forgive him for this.”
― Andrea Barrett, Servants of the Map: Stories

“He will break it to her gently, he thinks. A hint, at first; a few more suggestions in letters over the coming months; in September he'll raise the subject. By then...Perhaps he'll have more encouragement from Dr. Hooker by then, which he can offer to Clara as evidence that his work is worthwhile. Perhaps he'll understand by then how he might justify his plans to her. For now - what else can he say in this letter? He has kept too much from her, these last months. If his letters were meant to be a map of his mind, a way for her to follow his trail, then he has failed her. Somehow, as summer comes to these peaks and he does his job for the last time, he must find a way to let her share in his journey. But for now all he can do is triangulate the first few points.”
― Andrea Barrett, Servants of the Map: Stories

“In that light, across the field, is all I will never have. Next to me is all I will.”
― Andrea Barrett, Servants of the Map: Stories

“He thought back but Bianca, her foot heavy on the accelerator, thought away. From Rose, their mother, their entire past, books and papers and stories and sorrows: let it sink into the ocean. She had her wallet and her sleeping bag and her running shoes and her van; and she drove as if this were the point from which the rest of her life might begin.”
― Andrea Barrett, Servants of the Map: Stories

“Not long after he and Margaret were married, he'd complimented her on a pot of yellow blossoms near the front door. She'd laughed, and blushed, and then confessed that weeks earlier, watching him walk around the vegetable garden, she'd slipped out, dug up a brick-sized clump of earth which held the clear impression of his right foot, and tucked it into the flower pot. In that earth she'd planted a chrysanthemum, hoping that as it bloomed year after year so would his love for her. How should he marry again, after that?”
― Andrea Barrett, Servants of the Map: Stories