“Everything about [chance] scares the bejesus out of so many people; it's the this thing they try to avoid at all costs. Don't travel to the Middle East these days - there's a chance something could happen. Don't get involved with that new fellow on Creamery Street - I hear a lot of mud was scraped off his floor after the divorce. Don't have your baby at home - there's a a chance something could go wrong. Don't don't don't... Well, you can't live your life like that! You can't spend your entire life avoiding chance. It's out there, it's inescapable, it's a part of the soul of the world. There are no sure things in this universe, and it's absolutely ridiculous to try and live like there are!”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from Midwives
“No one said living isn't a pretty chancy business, Sibyl. No one gets out of here alive.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from Midwives
“Boys look at us like we look at horses: color, height, eyes. tail. They can't help but have preferences.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from Midwives
“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
“...we were too young- and the ground too muddy- for our small part of the earth to move.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from Midwives
“When the sun is strong and the air is warm, however, we shout greetings to one another down the lengths of long driveways and from the windows of our cars as we pass; we hold our heads high as we walk, staring up into the sky with our eyes shut and our faces widened by smiles. We breathe in deeply the summery air, but this sort of inhalation doesn’t result in a sigh; it’s a precursor to a purr, or the moans one might make during a backrub. We no longer mope, we no longer grouse. We are filled with energy. Although”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from Midwives
“Charlotte: Giordano is terribly afraid Gwyneth will get everything wrong tomorrow that she can get wrong.
Gideon: Pass the olive oil, please.
Charlotte: Politics and history are a closed book to Gwyneth. She can’t even remember names—they go in at one ear and straight out of the other. She can’t help it, her brain doesn’t have the capacity. It’s stuffed with the names of boy bands and long, long cast lists of actors in soppy romantic films.
Raphael: Gwyneth is your time-traveling cousin, right? I saw her yesterday in school. Isn’t she the one with long dark hair and blue eyes?
Charlotte: Yes, and that birthmark on her temple, the one that looks like a little banana.
Gideon: Like a little crescent moon.
Raphael: What’s that friend of hers called? The blonde with freckles? Lily?
Charlotte: Lesley Hay. Rather brighter than Gwyneth, but she’s a wonderful example of the way people get to look like their dogs. Hers is a shaggy golden retriever crossbreed called Bertie.
Raphael: That’s cute!
Charlotte: You like dogs?
Raphael: Especially golden retriever crossbreeds with freckles.
Charlotte: I see. Well, you can try your luck. You won’t find it particularly difficult. Lesley gets through even more boys than Gwyneth.
Gideon: Really? How many . . . er, boyfriends has Gwyneth had?
Charlotte: Oh, my God! This is kind of embarrassing. I don’t want to speak ill of her, it’s just that she’s not very discriminating. Particularly when she’s had a drink. She’s done the rounds of almost all the boys in our class and the class above us . . . I guess I lost track at some point. I’d rather not repeat what they call her.
Raphael: The school mattress?
Gideon: Pass the salt, please.”
― Kerstin Gier, quote from Sapphire Blue
“Birds sat on the telegraph wires that spanned the river as the black notes sit on a staff of music.”
― Rebecca West, quote from The Return of The Soldier
“Anger is almost always based on fear, and fear is the easiest emotion to manipulate.”
― Mary Elizabeth Summer, quote from Trust Me, I'm Lying
“He measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from Fictions
“They will not face the fact that the military professionals, while some have ideas about society in general that are distorted and must be watched, still know better than anyone else how a war is won.”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, quote from This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness
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