Quotes from Jesus Land: A Memoir

“It took him a while to figure out that gaining an audience was not the same thing as gaining friends.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir

“Mother's got romantic notions about toiling the land - or mostly, about her children toiling the land. And with fifteen acres, there's always something that needs toiling with.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir

“Seems we can never just be brother and sister like in other families. Our whole lives, people have felt an urge to make up special names for what we are. at Lafayette Christian, we were the 'Oreo twins' or 'Kimberly and Arnold' after the characters on Diff'rent Strokes. And while those nicknames bugged us, they were certainly preferable to what they call us at Harrison”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir

“Life may not be fair, but when you have someone to believe in, life can be managed, and sometimes, even miraculous.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir

“So we are drawn to graveyards, where we can be close to the dead and ponder their fate as well as our own.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir

“The first time it happened, I laid there marveling at the beauty of it, wondering why God would forbid such bliss when He makes us endure so much misery.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir

“It's just after three o'clock when we hit County Road 50. The temperature has swelled past ninety and the sun scorches our backs as we swerve our bikes around pools of bubbling tar.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir

“So much for the famous 'Hoosier hospitality.' When we moved to our new house, no one stopped by with strawberry rhubarb pie or warm wishes. Our neighbors must have taken one look at David and Jerome and locked their doors - and minds - against us”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir

“Neither of us uttered a word about what happened. We never do. But I can't smudge it from my mind. The farm boys' sneering red faces. The runt shaking the fence. The brown lump of spit tobacco. The anguish in David's eyes. They don't know the first thing about us; they just hate us because we're black”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir

“As we paint each other's nails Cinnamon Vixen, I consider telling her how bad things are at home. After she and Dan and Laura left for college, everything got worse. Mother's mood swings, Dad's violence, the name-calling at school.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir

“Many readers say they also feel like outcasts in their hometowns, oppressed by religionists, racists, homophobes, or other pea-brained busybodies. The advice I give them is this: If you feel like a misfit in the place where you were born, move somewhere else. I did. I now reside in the most progressive town in the country—Berkeley, California.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir

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“How had she ended up like this, imprisoned in the role of harridan? Once upon a time, her brash manner had been a mere posture - a convenient and amusing way for an insecure teenage bride, newly arrived in America, to disguise her crippling shyness. People had actually enjoyed her vituperation back then, encouraged it and celebrated it. She had carved out a minor distinction for herself as a 'character': the cute little English girl with the chutzpah and the longshoreman's mouth. 'Get Audrey in here,' they used to cry whenever someone was being an ass. 'Audrey'll take him down a peg or two.'

But somewhere along the way, when she hadn't been paying attention, her temper had ceased to be a beguiling party at that could be switched on and off at will. It had begun to express authentic resentments: boredom with motherhood, fury at her husband's philandering, despair at the pettiness of her domestic fate. She hadn't noticed the change at first. Like an old lady who persists in wearing the Jungle Red lipstick of her glory days, she had gone on for a long time, fondly believing that the stratagems of her youth were just as appealing as they had ever been. By the time she woke up and discovered that people had taken to making faces at her behind her back - that she was no longer a sexy young woman with a charmingly short fuse but a middle-aged termagant - it was too late. Her anger had become a part of her. It was a knotted thicket in her gut, too dense to be cut down and too deeply entrenched in the loamy soil of her disappointments to be uprooted.”
― Zoë Heller, quote from The Believers

“You obviously haven’t lived in D.C. very long if you think two and a half minutes is too soon to talk politics.”
― Jeri Smith-Ready, quote from Requiem for the Devil

“Vintage books, old china, antiques; maybe I love old things so much because I feel impermanent myself.”
― Josh Lanyon, quote from Fatal Shadows

“Let us put our minds together and see what kind of life we can make for our children.” — Sitting Bull I”
― Kent Nerburn, quote from Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder

“A nod at Beatrice who held absolutely still. "She said she would come with me. She insisted on it. She stamped her little foot at me."
He pointed down to her toes as if she were a child yet.
Then he straightened his shoulders. "But I sent her back to the nursery, where she belonged, and told her to play with her dolls instead. As everyone knows, a female on a hunt is a distraction at best and bad luck at worse."

Which explained why Beatrice went into the woods with her hound alone, George thought. She looked now as though she had gone to some other place where she could not hear her father's words and thus could not be hurt by them. George wondered how often she was forced to go to that place.

Did King Helm not see how much she was like him? It seemed she was rejected for any sign of femininity yet also rejected for not showing enough femininity, How could she win?”
― Mette Ivie Harrison, quote from The Princess and the Hound

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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