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S Quotes

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All S Quotes

“She wondered how many towns like this existed all over the country?Bucolic scenery on the outside, with its own private soap operas, gossips and hells on the inside. She wondered if the suburbs in huge cities were merely a collection of small towns, piled on top of each other and each place was ultimately the same. The thought struck her as exceedingly depressing. However, her spirits were not in their best shape.”

“She wondered how many women had been trapped - in terrible marriages, terrible jobs, unbearable circumstances - simply because the world hadn't been designed to allow them to thrive on their own. Their decisions would always be scrutinized by the lives at which they were able to sacrifice themselves, their bodies, their pleasures and desires. A woman who imagined her own way out would always be ostracized for her own strength.”

“She wondered how people would remember her. She had not made enough to spread her wealth around like Carnegie, to erase any sins that had attached to her name, she had failed, she had not reached the golden bough. The liberals would cheer her death. They would light marijuana cigarettes and drive to their sushi restaurants and eat fresh food that had traveled eight thousand miles. They would spend all of supper complaining about people like her, and when they got home their houses would be cold and they'd press a button on a wall to get warm. The whole time complaining about big oil.”

“She wondered if every place in New Orleans had a secret garden, if every place was so witchy and beautiful. And for the first time, she was filled with an enormous pride for who she was--what she was, all of it. That pride filled the spaces between her bones so that it was impossible not to stand tall. Anxiety makes everything feel very big or very small, depending on which is more hurtful in the moment. Being suddenly relived of anxiety in this moment gave her a clear understanding that this was the life she had been running towards. Not necessarily New Orleans, not a distant dot on a map, not a brand-new career, but a life full of secret gardens”

“She wondered if she was the only person trying not to imagine what death-by-bear looked like. Would bears pick the bones white? Or would they leave bits of meat for the coyotes to scavenge? The authorities hadn’t actually determined the type of animal that did the mauling, but she couldn’t help but picture a bear.”

“She wondered if they would taste the same over the mere application of ingredients in the correct amounts, without the memory of Karinne explaining how to do it. . . . Logically, she knew it should taste the same regardless. Food was a matter of practical application. But to those who ate, it was full of memories, the significance of 'delicious as always.' It seemed impossible that it could taste the same if it was not made with equally tactile memories going into the cooking.”

“She wondered when her daughter would realise that for the most part, people weren't that different. Young and old, male or female, pretty much everyone she knew wanted the same things: The wanted to feel peace in their hearts, they wanted a life without turmoil, they wanted to be happy. The difference, she thought, was that most young people seemed to think that those things lay somewhere in the future. While most older people believed that they lay in the past.”

“She wondered when Papa would accept that she wasn't the sort of girl gentlemen flocked to. In his eyes she was lovely, but Eliza knew he was the only one who saw her that way. Plain girls had made splashes in society, but usually by virtue of being vivacious and witty. Eliza tended to grow mute and hesitant in the presence of elegant strangers, and any wit she had vanished from her brain if one of them actually spoke to her. Undoubtedly Papa hoped her enormous dowry would outweigh her shyness, but Eliza would rather be that eccentric old lady with a house full of dogs than marry a husband who only wanted her money. So Papa could dream, but Eliza was far less certain. Perhaps some day she would meet an affable country squire who didn't need a beautiful, charming wife, but preferred a quiet girl content to play with her dog and tend her garden. And if not, she would just remain where she was.”

“She wondered whether there would ever come an hour in her life when she didn't think of him -- didn't speak to him in her head, didn't relive every moment they'd been together, didn't long for his voice and his hands and his love. She had never dreamed of what it would feel like to love someone so much; of all the things that had astonished her in her adventures, that was what astonished her the most. She thought the tenderness it left in her heart was like a bruise that would never go away, but she would cherish it forever.”

“She wondered why happiness should be so acutely remembered when sorrow vanishes, like pain. Those brilliant tethered moments are seldom black. I was often miserable--but some kindly (or perverse) mechanism of the memory fades out all that, leaving quite other things, and hence an untruthful whole. We quarrelled, but all I have now of those quarrels is a pungent taste, not words nor phrases but a flavour: his silent back, my churning resentment.”

“She wondered: How could people respond to these images if images didn't secretly enjoy the same status as real things? Not that images were so powerful, but that the world was so weak. It could be read, certainly, in its weakness, as on days when the sun baked fallen apples in orchards and the valley smelled like cider, and cold nights when Jordan had driven Chadds Ford for dinner and the tires of her Chevrolet had crunched on the gravel driveway; but the world was fungible only as images. Nothing got inside the head without becoming pictures.”