“the way i see it, hard times aren't only about money, or drought, or dust. hard times are about losing spirit, and hope, and what happens when dreams dry up.”
― Karen Hesse, quote from Out of the Dust
“And I know now that all the time I was trying to get
out of the dust,
the fact is,
what I am,
I am because of the dust.
And what I am is good enough.
Even for me.”
― Karen Hesse, quote from Out of the Dust
“The way I see it, hard times aren't only about money,
or drought,
or dust.
Hard times are about losing spirit,
and hope,
and what happens when dreams dry up.”
― Karen Hesse, quote from Out of the Dust
“I hear the first drops. Like the tapping of a stranger at the door of a dream, the rain changes everything.”
― Karen Hesse, quote from Out of the Dust
“I have a hunger,
for more than food.
I have a hunger
bigger than Joyce City.
I want tongues to tie, and
eyes to shine at me
like they do at Mad Dog Craddock.
Course they never will,
not with my hands all scarred up,
looking like the earth itself,
all parched and rough and cracking,
but if I played right enough,
maybe they would see past my hands.
Maybe they could feel at ease with me again,
and maybe then,
I could feel at east with myself.”
― Karen Hesse, quote from Out of the Dust
“each day after class lets out,each morning before it begins, i sit at the school piano and make my hands work. in spite of the pain, in spite of the stiffness and scars. i make my hands play piano.i have practiced my best piece over and over till my arms throb.”
― Karen Hesse, quote from Out of the Dust
“Apples
Ma's apple blossoms
have turned to hard green balls.
To eat them now,
so tart,
would turn my mouth inside out,
would make my stomach groan.
But in just a couple months,
after the baby is born,
those apples will be ready
and we'll make pies
and sauce
and pudding
and dumplings
and cake
and cobbler
and have just plain apples to take to school
and slice with my pocket knife
and eat one juicy piece at a time
until my mouth is clean
and fresh
and my breath is nothing but apple.
June 1934”
― Karen Hesse, quote from Out of the Dust
“I turn my back on him as he goes,
and settle myself in the parlor,
and touch Ma's piano.
My fingers leave sighs
in the dust.”
― Karen Hesse, quote from Out of the Dust
“When I rode the train west,
I went looking for something,
but I didn't see anything wonderful.
I didn't see anything better than what I already had.
Home.”
― Karen Hesse, quote from Out of the Dust
“...the morning with the whole day waiting,
full of promise,
the night
of quiet, of no expectations, of rest.
And the certainty of home, the one I live in,
and the one
that lives in me.”
― Karen Hesse, quote from Out of the Dust
“By the summer I turned nine Daddy had given up about having a boy. He tried making me do.”
― Karen Hesse, quote from Out of the Dust
“And she knows how to come into a home
and not step on the toes of a ghost.”
― Karen Hesse, quote from Out of the Dust
“His mother is wishing her boy would come home."
Lots of mothers wishing that these days,
while their sons walk to California,
where rain comes,
and the color green doesn't seem like such a miracle,
and hope rises daily, like sap in a stem.”
― Karen Hesse, quote from Out of the Dust
“Mr. Noble and Mr. Romney have a bet going as to who can kill the most rabbits. It all started at the rabbit drive last Monday over to Sturgis”
― Karen Hesse, quote from Out of the Dust
“Ivy Huxford kept peeking out and giving reports of who was there, and how she never saw so many seats filled in the Palace, and that she didn’t think they could squeeze a rattlesnake into the back even if he paid full price, the place was so packed.”
― Karen Hesse, quote from Out of the Dust
Karen Hesse
Born place: in Baltimore, Maryland, The United States
Born date August 29, 1952
See more on GoodReads
“Because he can't imagine a time when the heavy darkness will lift.”
― Joelle Charbonneau, quote from Need
“In the pit of red
You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness
But the jewel you lost was blue.”
― Ted Hughes, quote from Birthday Letters
“The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God’s foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man’s insanity is heaven’s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.”
― Herman Melville, quote from Moby-Dick
“The home is the center of life. It is a refuge from the grind of work, the pressure of school, and the menace of the streets. We say that at home, we can “be ourselves.” Everywhere else, we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks.
The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, where as children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised.”
― Matthew Desmond, quote from Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“7 We have •redemption in Him through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace”
― quote from HCSB: Holman Christian Standard Bible
Not a Fan: Becoming...
So Much for That
The Battle of Everni...
Astonishing X-Men, V...
Angels' Flight
CooperBookQuoters 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.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
