The Girls

Write,' she said, 'as if you'll never be read. That way you'll be sure to tell the truth.

I feel, holding books, accommodating their weight and breathing their dust, an abiding love. I trust them, in a way that I can't trust my computer, though I couldn't do without it. Books are matter. My books matter. What would I have done through these years without the library and all its lovely books?

The strangest thing about strange things is that they're only strange when you hear about them or think about them later, but never when you're living them.

If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars though they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead.

What is it about sadness that can be so fulfilling?

How cruel it must be for a man to live past his soul.

Art isn't a product. It's an experience

The city, no matter how small, is corrupt and unrepentant, while the sun shines brighter in the country, making people more wholesome.

I hum some secret place into being, thinking of this other me, the one that only I can see, a girl called She, who is not We, a girl who I will never be.

Aunt Lovey used to tell me that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed a writer's voice. 'Read,' she'd say, 'and if you have a writer's voice, one day it will shout out, 'I can do that too!

Before she closed her eyes tonight, Rose said she regretted that she has not done something heroic in her life. Well, it's not like she can suddenly climb a tree and save a cat, or go to medical school and begin some important cancer research. But Rose has been my sister. I think that's heroic.

In sleep, my sister and I found a common breath. In dreams, we knew the moon.

I would not have dreamed back then, could never have imagined, that one day I would be a childless mother too.

I can't exactly say why I've chosen to write about the things that I am writing about. There are doubtless better stories from my life that I am missing, events and escapades I am not wise enough to know were important. If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars that they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead. p 179

Funny how you can measure time by pets that were not even your own.

Uncle Stash said you didn't have to be crazy to to do something stupid, just young.

I wonder if all women secretly fantasize, like me, about what it would be like to be an extraordinary beauty and bitchy as you wanna be.

Ruby is my sister. And strangely, undeniably, my child.

On the farm, in our first-floor bedroom, my sister and I were sheltered in the essence of normal. We were not hidden, but unseen. The orange farmhouse was our castle, our kingdom the fields around, and the shallow creek that bisected our property the sea we crossed to find adventure.

The final picture in the album was of Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash, their black-and-white wedding photo. I hated that their picture came last, because it felt like they were saying goodbye.

You're just not always in a place for as long as you thought you'd be.

As I grew older, I found I could surrender my own comfort so effortlessly it didn't qualify as sacrifice.

You think about these words final last never a lot, and there are not many things, when you come right down to it, that you'll be happy to see the end of.

There's too much information out there. And not enough smart people.

Fatal is fatal, but it doesn't have to be all downhill.

It was Aunt Lovey's belief that all ordinary people led extraordinary lives, but just didn't notice.