Quotes from The Orchardist

“She revered solitude, but only because there was the possibility of breaking it. Of communing at last with another.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“When he was a boy he was happy when the men arrived, and in a way wanted them to remain forever--but he was also anxious that they had arrived, that he was no longer alone. The sorrow came from those two feelings--the happiness of company, the anxiety of interrupted solitude. That was what he had felt, he thought, and what to some extent he still felt.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“He regarded the world—objects right in front of his face—as if from a great distance. For when he moved on the earth he also moved in other realms. In certain seasons, in certain shades, memories alighted on him like sharp-taloned birds: a head turning in the foliage, lantern light flaring in a room.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“She could strive for perfection only in certain, few things; beyond that, it was important only to be tidy.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“The night has made up its mind. It’s we who are too slow, who move in the wake of events already decided for us, who refuse, who are too weak or too simple, or are perhaps, strictly, unable to understand”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“A place to show her children: and you belong to the earth, and the earth is hard.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“He had pulled out of that grief, eventually – out from under the suffocating weight of it. Suffering had formed him: made him silent and deliberate, thoughtful: deep.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“He did not expect her to be happy—how that word lost meaning as the years progressed—but he only wished her to be unafraid, and able to experience small joys.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“And that was the point of children, thought Caroline Middey: to bind us to the earth and to the present, to distract us from death. A distraction dressed as a blessing: but dressed so well, and so truly, that it became a blessing. Or maybe it was the other way around: a blessing first, before a distraction.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“It was only too bad that to gossip and support mean ideas was easier and more enjoyable, really, than to keep quiet and know in silence that the true story can never be told, articulated in a way that will tell the whole truth. Even if it is better to be quiet, quietness will never reign. People talked, even the best of them.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“The man said that a portion of track just up into the mountain pass had been damaged by a rockslide early that morning, and they had shut down the whole system for maybe as long as the rest of the summer. The man shook his head, incredulous, disgusted, but also delighted in the way that people are often delighted by bad news, or the opportunity to discuss bad news that does not immediately affect them.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“They were blessed, said Jane; they were going to give birth to themselves. It would be themselves they gave birth to, only better. That was why she and Della must work so hard to protect them, their children. In protecting the children Jane and Della would also (Jane explained this over and over again) save themselves—”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“Not only a few times, but every time he did not give in to his urge to go look for her, he resented the moment that came in its place. Even if the moment was beautiful and was something he valued, and made him who he was. He could not help but also long for that other life in which he lived with Della, even if she abused him.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“The sorrow came from those two feelings—the happiness of company, the anxiety of interrupted solitude.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“She was haunted by the possibility that she had missed her chance for happiness. But she had not missed her chance, she told herself, for her chance would not let her get away so easily. Each morning she was fortified by hope: the future loomed.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“They had heard that many, many miles away, but not so many as before they started, on the other side of the mountains, was the ocean. Constant rain. Greenness. Maybe that's where they were going, thought Talmadge. Sometimes--but how could he think this? how could a child think this of his mother?--he thought she was leading them to their deaths. Their mother was considered odd by the other women at the mining camp; he knew this, he knew how they talked about her. But there was nothing really wrong with her he though (forgetting the judgement of a moment before); it was just that she wanted different things than those women did. That was what set them and his mother apart. Where some women wanted mere privacy, she yearned for complete solitude that verged on the violent; solitude that forced you constantly back upon yourself; even when you did not want it anymore. But she wanted it nonetheless. From the time she was a small girl, she wanted to be alone. The sound of other people's voiced grated on her: to travel to town, to interact with others who were not Taldmadge or Talmadge's father or sister, was torture to her: it subtracted days from her life. And so they walked: to find a place that would absorb and annihilate her, a place to be her home, and the home for her children. A place to show her children, you belong to the earth, and the earth is hard.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“How like the orchard she was. Because of her slowness and the attitude in which she held herself -seemingly deferent, quiet-it appeared even a harsh word would smite her. But it would not. She was like an egg encased in iron. She was the dream of the place that bore her, and she did not even know it.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“It was as if she had grown, changed, overnight; her hair was different, her eyes; the shade and texture of her flesh, her limbs; and, most disconcerting and delightful of all, she was beginning to speak. She increasingly talked back to him when he murmured to her, and he understood that she was becoming what she was destined to become, when he first held her in the open air of the world: her own person, her own independent and particular self. He marveled at it all. And what would she grow up to be like? What was inside her, already formed, that would draw forth with time, and what was it that she most needed him to teach her? Would she be amenable to his help, his advice in worldly matters? And what advice did he have to give her?”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“The sound was loud and soft at the same time, like the sound upon which other sound was built. You didn’t hear the horses until you listened for them; and then they were very loud.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“THERE CAME AGAIN, during that following spring and summer, the feeling that Angelene had almost forgotten, of being alone in the orchard, of being utterly herself.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“She revered solitude, but only because there was the possibility of breaking it.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“We do not belong to ourselves alone, she wanted to say, but there was no one to speak to.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“Things might get very bad, things might be worse than she ever imagined, but the stars existed, and that was something.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“The narrow bed with its purple, red, and green quilt, the bedside table with its jar of rocks, piled books. The porcelain basin near the window where she washed her face, the pitcher with the brown rose painted on it, the large crack like a vein in the bottom of the basin. The apricot orchard, the buzzing bees like a haze in spring. The barn—the smell of hay and manure, grease, old leather. The sun streaming through the slats. The mule’s nose in her palm.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“It was not the presents laid out on the bed, or the airing of, the constant fussing over, his suit. Not the slow, deliberate polishing of his good shoes, and wrapping them, for safety, in a paper bag. She was only a little wary of these things. Suspicious. But what she feared most were his silences. The times when she felt him prepare to speak, but ultimately falter. Turn away. The leagues, which his eyes revealed at times, of what he did not say.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“They had heard that many, many miles away, but not so many as before they started, on the other side of the mountains, was the ocean. Constant rain. Greenness. Maybe that's where they were going, thought Talmadge. Sometimes--but how could he think this? how could a child think this of his mother?--he thought she was leading them to their deaths. Their mother was considered odd by the other women at the mining camp; he knew this, he knew how they talked about her. But there was nothing really wrong with her, he thought (forgetting the judgement of a moment before); it was just that she wanted different things than those women did. That was what set them and his mother apart. Where some women wanted mere privacy, she yearned for complete solitude that verged on the violent; solitude that forced you constantly back upon yourself; even when you did not want it anymore. But she wanted it nonetheless. From the time she was a small girl, she wanted to be alone. The sound of other people's voiced grated on her: to travel to town, to interact with others who were not Taldmadge or Talmadge's father or sister, was torture to her: it subtracted days from her life. And so they walked: to find a place that would absorb and annihilate her, a place to be her home, and the home for her children. A place to show her children, you belong to the earth, and the earth is hard.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“He protected her, he placed himself between her and the world.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“The odor of the room was baked fruit, beeswax, pine, and old newspapers.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

“In April the true labor began. He rose before dawn and was at work in the trees as the sun rose. On a ladder, with his shears, maneuvering into the farthest reaches of the understories. At times whistling, at times muttering to himself. But mostly silent. Always working in that calm, deliberate way that made it impossible to imagine that he would ever complete the row, not to mention the entire orchard, in time. How could he afford to be so careful? It's that it was just possible, but barely. The design, the organization he achieved in the rows, in each tree, pleased him like nothing else. It was his passion, his whole life.”
― Amanda Coplin, quote from The Orchardist

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