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Quote by Charlotte Gordon

“Still, the limitations of what we can know, no matter how obsessed we are, have, inevitably, become clear to me. She walks ahead of me and I don't get to see her face. Was her hair brown or pale? Was she slim? Did she get heavier as she bore her children? Or was she petite, like a bird? What did her voice sound like? Did she argue with her husband? Did she like to cook? Was she as ambitious as I think she was? Would she have approved of my writing about her? But the closer I have drawn, the more she has receded, her figure diminishing, no matter how I strain to catch up. Those shores of early America are irretrievable, as is Anne. I have tried to retrieve her here, but some of the most important things are bound to be left unknown.”

Quote by Charlotte Gordon

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Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America's First Poet

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Charlotte Gordon

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“We ought to, as human beings, have the courage to seek a collective “truth” that benefits our species the most, and to accept that all of our doctrines and beliefs may just be incomplete. That we don’t know it all and that perhaps we never will. That others like us may have something to teach us, and we may have something to contribute to their communities. That communities, types of people, are divisions we’ve created for ourselves. That for all of what we know, the knowledge and wisdom that we have gathered in the few millennia may be a small fraction of what is there to be discovered, understood and applied.”

“Portia gasped awake with the taste of apples in her mouth- crisp green apples smothered in brown sugar and spice. She needed to bake. Lying tangled in the sheets, she tried to calm her racing heart. She tried to write off this urge, too. It was nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to moving to the Big Apple. But no matter how forcefully she told herself she had stuffed the knowledge back down, she realized that she hadn't. Not really. When she would have smelled bleach and sundries cotton, it was the scent of apples and buttery caramel that swirled in her mind. The urges to bake and cook were getting stronger, the knowing coming back to life like simple syrup spun into cotton candy.”