“My sister had taught me to look at the world that way, as a place that glitters, as a place where the calls of the crickets and the crows and the wind are everyday occurrences that also happen to be magic.”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
“It was hard to stay angry when I felt so sad. I would rather have felt angry, but instead, all I could do was sob. Even though people had been coming over all day, the house seemed so lonely that I couldn't stand it.
The room grew somewhat dimmer. I didn't move as it grew dimmer still. Then, with a start, I hurried outside and ran to the alley in back of our house. Through a break between the buildings, I saw that the sun hung low over the horizon. I watched it until it started to hide between two trees in the distance. Then I climbed on a car and watched until only half of the sun was visible, and then a quarter, and then I felt a huge sickening panic inside of me and ran as hard as I could to a ladder I saw down the alley. I rushed up the ladder and climbed on the roof of somebody's garage. I saw the sun again, a quarter of it, and then a slice, and then it disappeared, the last time ever that the sun would set on a day my sister had lived.”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
“I almost never slept deeply anymore--as soon as she said my name, I always sat up immediately, no matter how tired I was.”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
“Here at the sea---especially at the sea---I could hear my sister’s voice in the waves: “Kira-kira! Kira-kira!”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
“Some days I think she was really miserable, because she cried a lot. In a way, I'd had to steel my heart to her crying. You need to steel yourself to a lot of things when someone in your family is really sick.”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
“I know a lot about when I was a little girl, because my sister used to keep a diary. Today I keep her diary in a drawer next to by bed. I like to see how her memories were the same as mine, but also different.”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
“For everything in my life, I would ask, Why? Why didn't the Chinese lady have teeth? Probably it was because she didn't brush them enough. I asked myself why we had to move to Georgia. It was because my father needed to work at this hatchery so he could support us better. Why did I kind of like that boy? Because he was kind of cute. And why was Lynnie sick? Why? There was no answer to that.”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
“Sometimes I thought about my future, because Lynn said I should. She said it was hard to tell at this point, but someday, if I didn't go to Africa to study animals, I might be a beautiful genius tennis player. I didn't worry about it one way or another. I didn't care if I was a genius or if I was pretty or if I was good in sports. I just liked to listen to Lynn and to talk to Bera-Bera and to eat rice candies. The lady who used to live down the street could take all of her top teeth out of her mouth. She wasn't allowed to eat chewy candy. I could eat any kind of candy I wanted because I still had my baby teeth. If they rotted, I would simply grow more teeth. That was pretty great.”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
“The blue of the sky is one of the most special colors in the world, because the color is deep but see-through both at the same time.”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
“I watched a swatch of the sky turn red. The red spread like blood in the sea: red, red, red, and then less and less red, until there was only blue left. I squinted as the sun rose. I must have fallen asleep, because when I woke up, my father was carrying me into the house. Sam walked beside us carrying the lawn chair, which seemed almost as big as he was. Inside the living room my father laid me on my cot. “She’s gone,” he said.”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
“I was worried that her spirit was watching me every time I cried. I was worried that if she saw me crying, she would be very unhappy and maybe she wouldn't be able to leave the earth the way she was supposed to. So even though I wanted her to keep watching me, I wished she would forget about me and never see my crying and never worry about me anymore, even if that meant I was now alone.”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
“When she first died, I felt sorry about all the pills I'd given that made her feel so miserable. But now I didn't feel so many regrets. Lynn wanted her life. I thought she was willing to suffer if she could still taste her food, if she could still talk about the sea, if she could still feel a breeze across her face, and even if she still could argue with her crazy sister!”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
“I cried and cried. But then I had to stop. One thing about me was that when I was having a serious wish session, I tried never to wish impossible wishes. I might have wished for sixteen crayons instead of eight, but even when I was little, I never wished for a thousand crayons, because I knew a thousand different crayons did not exist. So on that forty-ninth day I did not wish Lynn could be alive again, because I knew she was gone.”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
“Usually while I lay in bed, I liked to think of new things I could do for Lynnie. Maybe I could let her try my pillow to see if she liked it better. Or I could bring her a new cracker she'd never tried. Or maybe I could even find a new book that she'd never heard of and read it to her, even though she had heard of every book in the world. That night I knew that nothing I could do would make her feel better. So I lay in bed and listened to her mournful noise and didn't feel love or hate or anger or anything at all except despair.”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
“On the forty-ninth day after Lynn's death I opened all the windows in the alcove, even though it was raining. I closed my eyes and tried to feel Lynn's spirit. A leaf suddenly fell off the magnolia tree and flew in the wind and hit the screen right in front of me. I believe that leaf was a sign from Lynn.”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
“I didn't care if I was a genius or if I was pretty or if I was good in sports. I just liked to listen to Lynn and to talk to Bera-Bera and to eat rice candies.”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
“My mother did not think mustaches were feminine. I don't know why.”
― Cynthia Kadohata, quote from Kira-Kira
Cynthia Kadohata
Born place: in Chicago, Illinois, The United States
Born date July 2, 1956
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“The Army might screw you and your girlfriend might dump you and the enemy might kill you, but the shared commitment to safeguard one another’s lives is unnegotiable and only deepens with time. The willingness to die for another person is a form of love that even religions fail to inspire, and the experience of it changes a person profoundly.”
― Sebastian Junger, quote from War
“A whirlwind tour, I think, with each day starting in a different city, you wearing a different silk dress, tasting food the likes of which you cannot even imagine and learning how to weave your word-spells in all the world's languages.”
― Lisa Mantchev, quote from So Silver Bright
“A strong man sails by ash breeze!”
― Jean Lee Latham, quote from Carry On, Mr. Bowditch
“Strange that one man's actions could touch so many other people, like a single, thoughtless breath of wind coming in an open window and blowing the playing cards every which way.”
― Karleen Koen, quote from Through a Glass Darkly
“All the fear in the world, and the violence that comes from the fear, and the hatred that comes from the violence, and the lonliness that comes from the hatred. All the unhappiness, all the cruelty, it gathers like clouds in the air, and grows dark and cold and heavy, and falls like grey snow in thick layers over the land. Then the world is muffled and numb, and no one can hear each other or feel each other. Think how sad and lonely that must be.”
― William Nicholson, quote from Firesong
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