Jenny Wingfield · 352 pages
Rating: (8.2K votes)
“I think maybe miracles are something everybody has to find out about for themselves. Telling them about it doesn’t make them believe. It just makes them think you’re crazy as a bessie bug.”
“September showed up right on schedule, and lasted a whole month.”
“They’d have people out looking for her, and nothing makes grown-ups quite so mad as finding a child safe when they’d been scared silly that they might find that child dead.”
“And that's the way things have gone along from that day until this. Not staying the same, but always changing. And that's okay, because once one part of a thing changes, all the other pieces begin to shift, and pretty soon it's a whole new story.”
“Moses Never Closes was something folks counted on. It was a certain place in an uncertain world. Folks wanted it to stay the way it was, because once you change one part of a thing, all the other parts begin to shift, and pretty soon, you just don’t know what’s what anymore.”
“She was the most alone person he had ever met - so intent on staying forever breathtaking that she could never let any of life's glories take her own breath away.”
“And she knew Life well enough to know that if one person in a house gets really miserable for any length of time, the misery spreads like smallpox.”
“If you watch what the birds and wild animals do, you can survive pretty much anywhere, because they know things humans have forgotten, such as what’s poisonous and what’s not, and what it means when things suddenly get too quiet, and where to hide when what it means is danger.”
“Willadee asked him if he thought maybe it should say HAPPY EVER AFTER, but Samuel said no, he thought happiness was like any other miracle. The more you talked about it, the less people believed it was real. It was like Swan said, some things, everybody just had to find out about for themselves.”
“You expect us to believe the damnedest things.”
“Whatever it was, Calla's imagination had waked up from a long sleep, and these days she had the feeling that magic and miracles might be hovering in the air all around, waiting to happen. She wasn't a great believer in such things, but she didn't push the thought away.”
“If You are love, he roared, then love ain't much to crow about.”
“You don't go around questioning the Bible, not if you want to go to Heaven one of these days. Besides, once you start picking holes in things, it's hard to figure out which parts to throw away and which parts to keep.”
“And that’s the way things have gone along from that day until this. Not staying the same, but always changing. And that’s okay, because once one part of a thing changes, all the other pieces begin to shift, and pretty soon it’s a whole new story.”
“For Swan's birthday, Calla made pineapple upside-down cake, which is not the kind of cad you put candles on. So there was nothing to blow and make wishes on. Nobody missed the candles, because when you're eating pineapple upside-down cake, there is nothing much left to wish for”
“An electrical cord doesn’t have to carry a charge in order to be dangerous. It can still be used to tie people up. And strangle them.”
“Cassava No man had touched her, but a boy-child grew in the belly of the chief’s daughter. They called him Mani. A few days after birth he was already running and talking. From the forest’s farthest corners people came to meet the prodigious Mani. Mani caught no disease, but on reaching the age of one, he said, “I’m going to die,” and he died. A little time passed, and on Mani’s grave sprouted a plant never before seen, which the mother watered every morning. The plant grew, flowered, and gave fruit. The birds that picked at it flew strangely, fluttering in mad spirals and singing like crazy. One day the ground where Mani lay split open. The chief thrust his hand in and pulled out a big, fleshy root. He grated it with a stone, made a dough, wrung it out, and with the warmth of the fire cooked bread for everyone. They called the root mani oca, “house of Mani,” and manioc is its name in the Amazon basin and other places. (174)”
“Of course, they were paying for more than the groceries. They were financing the parking valets, and the starched white tablecloths, and the waiters with rings in their ears and cobs up their butts, who acted like you were putting them out if you asked them to fetch you an extra helping of bread. They were paying for the fancy French name slapped on a filet of fish that used to be called the catch-of-the-day. He’d seen pretentious outfits like that in ports all over the world. A few had even cropped up here in Key West, and those he scorned most of all.”
“There's nothing wrong with a youthful prospective. Don't forget- no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories you have to tell.”
“There always have been and there always will be people who have been corrupted into enjoying any excuse for cruelty.”
“Dances are generally more fun to think about and get ready for than they actually are when you get there.”
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