The Crane Husband Quotes

“She tilts her head. Her black eye is a pool of ink. It is a bottomless pit. It is a collapsed star, all density and hunger and relentless gravity, pulling everything it can into its center- to be unraveled, unmade, undone, and unrecognizable. How can anyone survive that kind of love?”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“You’ll learn that you’re safest around the people you mistrust and dislike. Your guard is up, you see? The more you love someone, the more dangerous to you they become. The more you love someone, the more willing you are to show them your throat.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“It´s a sad fact about true love," my mother told me once. "The sheep love me without ceasing, and that is why I am able to cause them pain-love is the path of least resistance, you see? It´s a lot more work to cause harm to someone who mistrusts you, or fears you. Or hates you. Love opens the city gates wide, and allows all manner of horrors right inside. This is why they don´t flinch when I come at them with something unpleasant.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“She said it was a sin to butcher an animal that you didn’t love first. And it was true. She loved the sheep. And they loved her back. “It’s a sad fact about true love,” my mother told me once. “The sheep love me without ceasing, and that is why I am able to cause them pain—love is the path of least resistance, you see? It’s a lot more work to cause harm to someone who mistrusts you, or fears you. Or hates you. Love opens the city gates wide, and allows all manner of horrors right inside. This is why they don’t flinch when I come at them with something unpleasant.” She paused for a moment. She took my hand between both of hers and her face became grave. “It’s the same thing with us. You’ll understand this when you’re older. You’ll learn that you’re safest around the people you mistrust and dislike. Your guard is up, you see? The more you love someone, the more dangerous to you they become. The more you love someone, the more willing you are to show them your throat.” At the time, I thought this was wise. I think differently now.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“Maybe we never actually run away. Maybe everywhere’s the same.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“Her eyes were strange to me then. Hollow. Empty. The cold dark between galaxies, or the dull ache of a barren, fruitless field. Looking back on it now, I recognize those eyes. I've seen those same eyes on different women in the years since—my girlfriends, my roommates, my coworkers. I saw them on a neighbor once, before I called the cops on her husband. I myself have had those eyes. But only once.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“I was, as I said, only nine. But my mother often spoke to me as though I were a peer rather than a child and expected me to understand things for which I did not yet have context. I didn’t know then to resent her for it.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“Art, true art, exists only to transform, my mother had said. And it is only truly art when it does transform. The maker. The viewer. Everyone.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“On the farm,” she said quietly, “mothers fly away like migrating birds. And fathers die too young. This is why farmers have daughters. to keep things going in the meantime, until it’s our time to grow wings. Go soaring across the sky.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“I live in the middle of the city, but it’s strange how many sounds remind me of the farmhouse. The voices of drunks stumbling out of the bar at night is eerily similar to the bellows of our sheep. The hum of traffic on the interstate is a dead ringer for the sound of drones. Every time an old beater starts up I rush to the window to look for the plows. And every time I hear the hiss of the electric wires running through the alley outside my apartment, I could swear I was hearing the sound that the corn makes as it grows. Maybe we never actually run away. Maybe everywhere’s the same.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“Your mother doesn't know these things,” he said, a note of pleading in his voice. "She has always been that way. She is an artist. Her feet barely touch the ground. I've been the one to keep her tethered to the earth. And now it's your job. And you're too young, and it's not fair, but there it is." He was right. It wasn't fair.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“My dad told me stories of weavers who stitched the world and spun fortunes and pulled on strings to change someone's fate. Was there a string I could pull to stop my father from dying? Was there a patch I could secure to block my mother from going away?”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“Sometimes, realizations occur in fits and starts. A moment of clarity here. A loud aha there. A slap on the forehead at the something so glaringly obvious that a child could have figured it out.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“But Michael was only six. He should be worrying about learning how to tie his shoes, not about our mother’s checking account.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“How can I eat," she asked me, "when I am so full of love?”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“But his eyes—hard and black and keen, and so shiny it almost hurt to look at them—didn’t peer through the spectacles at all. I had a suspicion that they were just for show.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband

“It’s a sad fact about true love,” my mother told me once. “The sheep love me without ceasing, and that is why I am able to cause them pain—love is the path of least resistance, you see? It’s a lot more work to cause harm to someone who mistrusts you, or fears you. Or hates you. Love opens the city gates wide, and allows all manner of horrors right inside. This is why they don’t flinch when I come at them with something unpleasant.” She paused for a moment. She took my hand between both of hers and her face became grave. “It’s the same thing with us. You’ll understand this when you’re older. You’ll learn that you’re safest around the people you mistrust and dislike. Your guard is up, you see? The more you love someone, the more dangerous to you they become. The more you love someone, the more willing you are to show them your throat.”
― Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband