“If we were a family, we were sharks in the womb, eating one another before only a few exited.”
Source: The Gods Below
“You remember that I’ve got you. Okay? Whenever things look rough, whenever you don’t think you can take another step and those fucking earthquakes seem to be able to tear you apart, you have to know that I’ve got you.”
Source: Who We Are
“I’ll make sure he knows that it doesn’t always matter where you come from. That even though we’re not blood, it doesn’t matter. He’ll belong to all of us, and we’ll belong to him.”
Source: Who We Are
“This is us. For better or worse, this is us. For all of our wrongs and for all of our rights, this is us.”
Source: The Art of Breathing
“And if you need to go,” Bear says, “somewhere far away from here, and you need me there, too, you know I’ll follow you. Right? It doesn’t matter when or where. I’ll follow you, Ty.”
Source: The Art of Breathing
“This is my family. We might not always get along. We might hurt each other sometimes. Things might seem unfair because we’ve loved, only to have lost. And there are days when it feels like we’re broken and there’s no way we’ll ever be put back together. Not with these earthquakes. Not with this ocean. Even now, after all that we’ve been through. But they’re mine, I think, and I belong to them.”
Source: The Art of Breathing
“Bear?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m doing the right thing. Right?”
“About?”
“Everything.”
He shrugs. “I think so. I hope so. We’ll find out, I guess. And even if it’s not, and even if it doesn’t go like we think it will, then you come back to me and I’ll put you back together and make sure all the little cracks hold together.”
Source: The Art of Breathing
“For the longest time, it was just Bear and me. That’s all we knew about how to survive. Eventually, it got better, but no matter where life takes us, no matter where our stories go, it always will come down to Bear and me. There might come a time when we’ll be apart, but everything I’ll do will be because of him, and everything I’ll do will be for him. He’s not just my brother, Sandy. Bear is the reason I’m alive.”
Source: The Art of Breathing
“They were shocked to see this because they thought of him as a father, not a son, and they looked away and then sneaked a glance and then looked away again when he fell against me and wept, and they saw me put an arm around him and had to adjust to this, the shock of seeing him as a brother and a son.”
Source: Underworld
“What with the lake and the railroads, and what with blizzards and floods and barn fires and forest fires and the general availability of shotguns and bear traps and homemade liquor and dynamite, what with the prevalence of lonliness and religion and the rages and ecstasies they induce, and the closeness of families, violence was inevitable.”
Source: Housekeeping ~ by MARILYNNE ROBINSON ~ First Edition ~ 1st Printing 1980