Light to the Hills Quotes

“A mama’s heart is a wonder, able to hold an endless measure of love, hope, sadness, and rage all at the same time.”
― Bonnie Blaylock, Light to the Hills

“Stories came from corn shuckings or hog killings, from setting up at a neighbor’s wake or helping a new mama with the young’uns. Side-splitting tall tales and sobering remembrances of hardship and loss were spun ’round the fire of an evening, sometimes with a guitar or mandolin chiming in. Now and then, on a special occasion or a particularly fine day, you might make it to the church on the slope over in Pickins to hear a tale or two from the Good Book. All the rest was memory. Recipes, songs, nursery rhymes, family history, and knowledge of signs or tokens. It all came from words told over and over until they stuck fast in the head and heart and became easy as breathing.”
― Bonnie Blaylock, Light to the Hills

“Depends what you call a miracle, I s’pose. Way I see it, you can either live like nothing’s a miracle or like everything is. Either way, it’ll work out to be the truth. But one makes your boots step a lot lighter than t’other’n.”
― Bonnie Blaylock, Light to the Hills

“A mama’s heart is a wonder”
― Bonnie Blaylock, Light to the Hills

“She remembered when it had all come together for her, in her father’s study, when letters made sounds and sounds made words, each one with a secret meaning that she had the power to understand. A curtain had parted, revealing a whole new way of seeing. She was a hard green buttercup bud that had finally busted out in bright yellow, open to the sunshine.”
― Bonnie Blaylock, Light to the Hills

“She remembered when it had all come together for her, in her father’s study, when letters made sounds and sounds made words, each one with a secret meaning that she had the power to understand.”
― Bonnie Blaylock, Light to the Hills

“Sometimes the good Lord sees fit to perch folks on the branches that require an extra measure of our grace. Sometimes those folks is us. Guess we all take turns.”
― Bonnie Blaylock, Light to the Hills

“Up in the thickets and caverns of the mountains, night falls as a thick wool blanket over everything. Mountain dark is sweet. Breezes blow with a clean smell, especially when there’s rain on the way. The forests release an organic smell of life, new sprouts of sassafras and privet, flowering laurel, and the damp layers of leaves and fallen logs, mushrooms sprinkled across their tops like freckles on a young girl’s nose. The trees sway above, their leaves rustling and dancing in the summer, pine needles and the evergreen cedars swishing when it’s cold.”
― Bonnie Blaylock, Light to the Hills

“It’s a wonder the world turns, with the foolishness of children and men the world over.”
― Bonnie Blaylock, Light to the Hills

“Her mother, meanwhile, led a life of verbs—plant, mend, plow, sew, chop, carve, sharpen, weave, cook, knead, harvest, haul—in revolving seasons.”
― Bonnie Blaylock, Light to the Hills

“Yes, yes! It does feel like magic,” she agreed. “Lines on a flat page get in your head and make a whole story with people and animals and everything.”
― Bonnie Blaylock, Light to the Hills

“warm bath, a good cry, and a cup of tea: her mother used to say that was close as you could get to the Holy Trinity here on Earth.”
― Bonnie Blaylock, Light to the Hills

“A mama’s heart is a wonder, able to hold an endless measure of love, hope, sadness, and rage all at the same time. Multiply that by the number of young’uns you had, and sometimes the torrent wore Rai down to her bones.”
― Bonnie Blaylock, Light to the Hills

“A warm bath, a good cry, and a cup of tea: her mother used to say that was close as you could get to the Holy Trinity here on Earth.”
― Bonnie Blaylock, Light to the Hills

“People say an ocean never stops moving, that it changes colors depending on the clouds passing by, and that you can get lost just staring at the endless reach of”
― Bonnie Blaylock, Light to the Hills