“I realized that the worst part of someone you love dying suddenly isn't the saying good-bye part. It's the part where you hope you said and did enough good stuff to make up for the bad stuff. It's the part where there are no second chances, no going back, no more opportunities to tell them how you feel about them.”
― Jennifer Brown, quote from Torn Away
“I've been thinking a lot about the word "everything." Whenever something horrible happens, you hear people say they "lost everything." They lost their house or their car or their stuff or whatever, and to them it feels like everything. But they have no idea what it's like to lose everything. I thought I knew, but now I realize even I haven't lost everything, because I still have that polka-dot swimsuit in my memory. I still have those ice cream nights and the scorpion that scared Marin and the Barking Bulldogs sweatshirt and the robins-egg-blue nail polish. Somehow having those things makes the other things matter less.
I'm wondering if it's even possible to lose "everything" or if you just have to keep redefining what "everything" is.”
― Jennifer Brown, quote from Torn Away
“Growing up, we were taught over and over again what steps to take in case of an approaching tornado. Listen for sirens, go to your basement or cellar, or a closet in the center of your house, duck and cover, wait it out. We had drills twice a year, every year, in school. We talked about it in class. We talked about it at home. The newscasters reminded us. We went to the basement. We practiced, practiced, practiced.
But we’d never— not once— discussed what to do after.”
― Jennifer Brown, quote from Torn Away
“It was one thing to lose the people you love. That happens to everybody. But it was another thing to lose them because you just... faded away.
I didn't want to fade away.”
― Jennifer Brown, quote from Torn Away
“...But would that be enough? Because at the moment it felt like it could never be enough. People needed more than a place to stay, more than a porch to sleep on. They needed a home, right? They needed love.”
― Jennifer Brown, quote from Torn Away
“But it was too much. All of it was too much. I didn't know what I was feeling, but I knew I needed some time alone, some space to think about everything.”
― Jennifer Brown, quote from Torn Away
“Welcome to the Midwest, Mom used to say. Where the weather keeps you guessing and you're almost always sure to hate it.”
― Jennifer Brown, quote from Torn Away
“Nobody was coming to rescue me. Nobody was going to keep me safe. It was all up to me now.”
― Jennifer Brown, quote from Torn Away
“I thought everything I knew about you might have been a lie, but since meeting him and your parents, I've realized that the parts of you I knew weren't untrue; they were only part-truths. There were lots of things about you that I didn't know, and learning those things has actually been comforting in a way. They make me feel closer to you. And I can see that actually there's one real truth, and that is you loved me enough to do anything it took to protect me. I think that's something I've known my whole life. I'm thankful for it.”
― Jennifer Brown, quote from Torn Away
“I realized that the worst part of someone you love dying suddenly isn't the saying goodbye part. It's the part where you wonder if they knew how much you loved them. It's the part where you hope you said and did enough good stuff to make up for the bad stuff. It's the part where there are no second chances, no going back, no more opportunities to tell them how you feel about them.”
― Jennifer Brown, quote from Torn Away
“I had so much going on in my heart, and it didn't often go together or make sense or even stay the same from moment to moment. How did I speak from a heart that didn't undersand itself?”
― Jennifer Brown, quote from Torn Away
“I didn't care. I didn't care about anything anymore. What did it matter? What did anything matter now? I was alone. I had no home, no family, nowhere that I belonged. In that moment, I finally and truly understood what it meant to have nothing to lose.”
― Jennifer Brown, quote from Torn Away
“After he left, I tried not to let my mind wander, tried not to think about the small things I'd lot in the tornado especially not with Mrs. Dempsey covered by a shower curtain a couple houses down, but I couldn't help myself. My clothes, my earrings, my music. Granted, I didn't have trendy clothes or expensive earrings, but if it had all blown away...I had nothing. Even a few cheap somethings is better than nothing.”
― Jennifer Brown, quote from Torn Away
Jennifer Brown
Born date January 1, 1972
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“They're all gone, my tribe is gone. Those blankets they gave us, infected with smallpox, have killed us. I'm the last, the very last, and I'm sick, too. So very sick. Hot. My fever burning so hot.
I have to take off my clothes, feel the cold air, splash water across my bare skin. And dance. I'll dance a Ghost Dance. I'll bring them back. Can you hear the drums? I can hear them, and it's my grandfather and grandmother singing. Can you hear them?
I dance one step and my sister rises from the ash. I dance another and a buffalo crashes down from the sky onto a log cabin in Nebraska. With every step, an Indian rises. With every other step, a buffalo falls.
I'm growing, too. My blisters heal, my muscles stretch, expand. My tribe dances behind me. At first they are no bigger than children. Then they begin to grow, larger than me, larger than the trees around us. The buffalo come to join us and their hooves shake the earth, knock all the white people from their beds, send their plates crashing to the floor.
We dance in circles growing larger and larger until we are standing on the shore, watching all the ships returning to Europe. All the white hands are waving good-bye and we continue to dance, dance until the ships fall off the horizon, dance until we are so tall and strong that the sun is nearly jealous. We dance that way.”
― Sherman Alexie, quote from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
“mooo," she said... "I mean mmmm," she moaned. Louder this time. Goddamn Dr. Seuss is ruining my sex life.”
― Jennifer Weiner, quote from Little Earthquakes
“It's a contention of Heat Moon's -- believing as he does any traveler who misses the journey misses about all he's going to get-- that a man becomes his attentions. His observations and curiosity, they make and remake him.”
― William Least Heat-Moon, quote from Blue Highways
“Ишап, морето е голямо, а лодката ми - малка. Имай милост към мен.”
― Raymond E. Feist, quote from Magician: Master
“Sometimes you couldn’t face the sadness of being forgotten until you felt the comfort of being remembered again.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Last Summer (of You and Me)
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