Quotes from Cane River

Lalita Tademy ·  522 pages

Rating: (41.7K votes)


“You can't tell how heavy somebody else's load is just from looking. The Lord doesn't give us more than we can carry”
― Lalita Tademy, quote from Cane River


“Reaching too deep into something not meant for you is full of pain. Figure out what you can have and work on that”
― Lalita Tademy, quote from Cane River


“Sometimes while you wait for what you think is better," Philomene said, "what is good enough slips away.”
― Lalita Tademy, quote from Cane River


“This was the face of slavery. To have nothing, and still have something more to lose.”
― Lalita Tademy, quote from Cane River


“There is nothing more satisfying than having plans.”
― Lalita Tademy, quote from Cane River



“Sometimes good came out of hurt, compensation came out of pain. He gave with one hand, and He took with the other.”
― Lalita Tademy, quote from Cane River


“Three generations of women out on the front porch, four counting little Emily, trying to put words around a past and a future that could never be explained.”
― Lalita Tademy, quote from Cane River


“Don’t be so eager to judge, Suzette. You can’t tell how heavy somebody else’s load is just from looking.”
― Lalita Tademy, quote from Cane River


“The two women worked easily together, but I soon sensed that, though Belle was in charge of the kitchen, Mama Mae was in charge of Belle.”
― Lalita Tademy, quote from Cane River


About the author

Lalita Tademy
Born place: in Berkeley, California, The United States
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“Some catastrophic moments invite clarity, explode in split moments: You smash your hand through a windowpane and then there is blood and shattered glass stained with red all over the place; you fall out a window and break some bones and scrape some skin. Stitches and casts and bandages and antiseptic solve and salve the wounds. But depression is not a sudden disaster. It is more like a cancer: At first its tumorous mass is not even noticeable to the careful eye, and then one day -- wham! -- there is a huge, deadly seven-pound lump lodged in your brain or your stomach or your shoulder blade, and this thing that your own body has produced is actually trying to kill you. Depression is a lot like that: Slowly, over the years, the data will accumulate in your heart and mind, a computer program for total negativity will build into your system, making life feel more and more unbearable. But you won't even notice it coming on, thinking that it is somehow normal, something about getting older, about turning eight or turning twelve or turning fifteen, and then one day you realize that your entire life is just awful, not worth living, a horror and a black blot on the white terrain of human existence. One morning you wake up afraid you are going to live.

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That's the thing I want to make clear about depression: It's got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal -- unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead.

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