“Now smile a real smile for me so I know you`re not suffering inside.”
“As she wove in and out of all the people - rushing, talking, eating, laughing; some in clumps, some alone - she realized that no one, no one at all in the airport, or on the entire planet for that matter, knew her thoughts, knew what she was carrying inside her head and heart. And at that very minute, what was inside her head and heart made her feel as though there was no one else in the whole world she would rather be.”
“What do you do when you are really, really sad?" When you are full of dread, is what she really meant.
Godbee exhaled through her nose, making a whistling sound. "Hmm. When I`m genuinely suffering I try to think of someone worse off than I am. And then, if it happens to be someone I know and I`m feeling particularly saintly, I try to do something nice for him or her.”
“The sky was full - of blue and sun. The ocean reflected it and was flat and glossy like a fancy ballroom floor. To Martha, this was the most beautiful sight, a miracle. The ocean made her feel insignificant and slightly afraid, but in an exhilarating way. Her inclination was not to walk or dance across the water's surface. Nor to swim through it. She wanted to *be* the ocean”
“Home was the same as when Martha had left it, but because *she* had changed, her world seemed slightly different, as though she were seeing everything in sharper focus.”
“The glittery feeling. She’d named it because it felt to her as if her skin and everything beneath it briefly became shiny and jumpy and bubbly, as if glitter materialized inside her, then rose quickly through the layers of tissue that comprised her, momentarily sparkling all over the surface of her skin before dissipating into the air. Martha”
“Martha had come up with the nickname Godbee by accident when she was younger than Lucy. Dorothy Boyle had been referred to as Grandma Boyle or Grandma B, for short, to distinguish her from Martha’s other grandmother, Anne Hubbard. As a toddler, Martha couldn’t pronounce Grandma B correctly, or had misheard it, and had, for as long as she could remember, called her favorite grandmother Godbee. For some reason, it had caught on. Not only with everyone in Martha’s family, but with some of Godbee’s friends and neighbors, too.”
“Obojica su se slagali da je zivot u Bosni neobicno tezak i narod svih vera bedan i zaostao u svakom pogledu. Trazeci razloge i objasnjenja tome stanju, fratar je sve svodio na tursku vladavinu i tvrdio da nikakvog boljitka ne moze da bude dok se ove zemlje ne oslobode turske sile i dok tursku vlast ne zameni hriscanska. Defose nije hteo da se zadovolji tim tumacenjem, nego je trazio razloge i u hriscanima samima. Turska vladavina stvorila je, tvrdio je on, kod svojih hriscanskih podanika izvesne karakteristicne osobine, kao pritvorstvo, upornost, nepoverenje, lenost misli i strah od svake novine i svakog rada i pokreta. Te osobine, nastale u stolecima nejednake borbe i stalne odbrane, presle su u prirodu ovdasnjeg coveka i postale trajne crte njegovog karaktera. Nastale od nuzde i pod pritiskom, one su danas, i bice i ubuduce, velika prepreka napretku, rdjavo nasledje teske proslosti i krupne mane koje bi trebalo iskoreniti.”
“You’re okay,” she says. “It’s just your first time back out here. You don’t need to go back.”
“The purpose of Art,” his mother, Sylvie, said—instructed even—“is to convey the truth of a thing, not to be the truth itself.”
“That sinuous southern life, that oblique and slow and complicated old beauty, that warm thick air and blood warm sea, that place of mists and languor and fragrant richness...”
“Shushtari proverb “Any gift from a true friend is valuable, even if it’s a hollow walnut shell.” It”
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