And Then She Fell Quotes

“My dad once told me it’s best to think of each story as a journey. Each sentence, even each word, is a step toward your destination, and you have to be careful where you step as a storyteller because the people are stepping after you. You want to make sure they’re going where you want them to go, because you’re carving a path together.”
― Alicia Elliott, And Then She Fell

“It took a while-- years, actually-- but eventually she understood: The most important thing wasn't that she had fallen. The most important thing was that she had been caught. That she had allowed herself to be caught.”
― Alicia Elliott, And Then She Fell

“Nothing I do is done solely for me. Everything is done to elevate Steve or Dawn, in some way. I'm an afterthought in my own life.”
― Alicia Elliott, And Then She Fell

“A part of me wants to cry at this small request, because I know what that longing is like, what it means. I won't be there forever, but I will be there for her. For her sister. For her mother. I'll be there, for a while, planting seeds, and it will matter.”
― Alicia Elliott, And Then She Fell

“You could tell she'd loved you fiercely even then, and it hit you: she chose you. She chose your mother and you and your sister, despite all the hardships that she must have known would come along with loving you. She said so herself in her letter, in a way.”
― Alicia Elliott, And Then She Fell

“...Worse, the thought of having to be grateful to some committee somewhere because they liked the way I'd stamped a Native face on "universal problems," otherwise known as problems legible to white folks, instead of stories that mattered to our people and arose from the land, the way Dad had always wanted-all of it was too much. I threw the acceptance letter in the trash and stopped writing again.”
― Alicia Elliott, And Then She Fell

“These women will counsel her through her hardships, her divorce, and make her feel like she matters, that she can be trusted, even when the rest of the world tells her she doesn't, that she can't. Whenever she falls, they will prepare the space for her to land. Just as she will for them, your mother, your sister, and you. This is the connection and love that slides between all hardships and gives the toughest life humor, meaning, heart, heft. That is the unspoken covenant of Native women.”
― Alicia Elliott, And Then She Fell