Wolf at the Table Quotes

“Myra tries her best not to read too quickly, but sometimes the words start to tumble and the voice of her narrator gallops in her head as if to overwhelm her and she has to force her eyes away from the page to calm herself.”
― Adam Rapp, Wolf at the Table

“Ronan has the distinct thought that his life is turning into a story: an epic novel that spans nearly a century. The book is a foot think, heavy as a slab of oak, and filled with the promise of a heroic life but also the tragedy of innumerable, unresolvable sorrows. One part of the novel is ending as another begins. All the words, one by one, will fill him up, make him whole.”
― Adam Rapp, Wolf at the Table

“Her son’s voice is like a piece of thread being slowly pulled away from this room, out of this house that she loves, this house filled with books and firewood and simple comforts. She follows his voice over the hide of the nearby mountains, into snowy forests stripped of their leaves, along the rugged shores of ancient lakes, across vast, unending plains of wheat and corn and lentil, through rocky mountains, deserts, canyons, and on into blue oceans of infinity.”
― Adam Rapp, Wolf at the Table

“Myra believes he possesses a cruel streak that has yet to be fully realized—that he might be capable of truly terrible things—and this frightens her.”
― Adam Rapp, Wolf at the Table

“Sometimes when Joan smiles it makes Myra sad. It’s as if she smiles only when prompted by the lift at the end of a question. Maybe to Joan certain words are no different from notes played on a woodwind.”
― Adam Rapp, Wolf at the Table

“She imagines that the process of getting closer to God might feel like having her hair aggressively braided.”
― Adam Rapp, Wolf at the Table

“Myra is struck that her mother never includes Joan in these talks about her siblings. It’s as if Joan is not quite a person, or worse yet, as if she’s something unnameable and heavy that must be transported from room to room in order for the Larkins to survive, like some huge bag of sand that, if not continuously moved, will eventually fall through the weakening floorboards and take everything with it.”
― Adam Rapp, Wolf at the Table

“At two months old, Myra’s baby brother still possesses the bald, wrinkled face of a stunned elderly police officer.”
― Adam Rapp, Wolf at the Table