Margaret Peterson Haddix · 218 pages
Rating: (14.3K votes)
“A thousand times today I've started to open my mouth, started to squeak out, "Can you tell me...? But then I'd look into the front seat, at my mother's silent shaking, my father's grim profile, the mournful bags under his eyes, and all the questions I might ask seemed abusive. Assault and battery, a question mark used like a club. My parents are old and fragile. I'd have to heartless to want to hurt them.”
― Margaret Peterson Haddix, quote from Double Identity
“The sudden silence is horrifying, and it seems to catch my mother off guard. A tiny whimper escapes her, the sound amplified in the stillness. Surely, my father hears her now; surely he and I can't go on pretending she isn't crying.”
― Margaret Peterson Haddix, quote from Double Identity
“That porch is a happy-looking place, and my father - burdened, stoop-shouldered, cadaverously thin - doesn't seem to belong on it.”
― Margaret Peterson Haddix, quote from Double Identity
“Unlike my mother, my father does not cry quietly. His wails roll out like a wave of pain, and I scramble to roll up my window. My mother cannot hear that. I cannot bear to hear it myself. I am not used to my father's crying. I've had no time to harden my heart against him.”
― Margaret Peterson Haddix, quote from Double Identity
“Oh, Myr," he chokes out. "I hate having to ask this of you..."
He glances towards the car again, and I crouch down in the shadows, hoping it's too dark for him to see whether the window is open or closed. The woman pats his arm, cradling her hand against his elbow.
"You know I'd do anything for you and Hil," she says. I like her voice. It's throaty and rich.
"You'd do anything?" my father repeats numbly. "Even now? After -?"
"Even now," the woman says firmly.”
― Margaret Peterson Haddix, quote from Double Identity
“Then there were those girls who became midwives: girls who could not get enough of the tiniest of babies - girls who would grow into women who absolutely reveled in the magnificent process of birth...The difference between a woman who becomes an OB and the women who becomes and midwife has less to do with education, philosophy or upbringing than with the depth of her appreciation for the miracle of labor and for life in its moment of emergence.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from Midwives
“Glum. It meant having the blues in a way that annoyed other people. Having the blues aggressively.”
― Gillian Flynn, quote from Dark Places
“Where, indeed? Captain Vincent Reed had been born in the city of Richmond, Virginia, of northern parents who were stationed there by the telegraph company. He had attended West Point and he thought he knew something about warfare, having served under General Pope in his long and futile struggle against General Stonewall Jackson. Those men were fighters who would face the enemy till the last bullet was fired, but neither would participate in such a slaughter.
Reed had had his troops in position. He was quite prepared to rush in for the kill, and he had positioned himself so that he would be in the vanguard when his men made their charge against the guns of the young braves threatening the left flank. But when he saw that the enemy had no weapons, that even their bows and arrows were not at hand, and that he was supposed to chop down little girls and old women, he rebelled on the spot, taking counsel with no one but his own conscience.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Centennial
“The enemy is the tyranny of the dull mind.”
― Tom Robbins, quote from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
“He laughed in maddened frenzy, knowing somehow that he was no longer in a world of living creatures, but a world of death where soulless beings wandered in hopeless search of escape from their eternal prison. He stumbled on amidst them, laughing, talking, even singing gaily, his mind no longer a part of his mortal being. All about him, the creatures of the dark world followed in cringing companionship, knowing that the maddened mortal was almost one of them.”
― Terry Brooks, quote from The Sword of Shannara
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