"'That's just the point,' her husband
said. 'It was precisely because you were not wild and glamorous, because
you were completely unselfconsciously your own self that you were irresistable.'"
– Madeleine L'Engle, The Young Unicorns
"... if we aren't capable of being hurt, we aren't capable of feeling joy."
– Madeleine L'Engle, A Ring of Endless Light
"I wanted the moment to go on forever, and even though I knew it couldn't,
while I was in it, it was forever."
– Madeleine L'Engle, Troubling a Star
"The more you love people. the more vulnerable you are."
– Madeleine L'Engle, Troubling a Star
"It's feeding into the present feeling that we're entitled
to have whatever gives us any kind of pleasure."
– Madeleine L'Engle, Troubling a Star
"But she finds it so difficult to verbalize, Charles dear. It helps her
if she can quote instead of working out words of her own."
– Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time, Mrs Whatsit
on Mrs Who
"Do you know that I tell you things
I wouldn't tell any other person in the world? This is true. Who else is
there? My friend Helena. Yes. I tell her things, but not everything. It's
nothing to do with Helena, I don't think she would hate me or anything
like that, it's more to do with me. I really can't bear the thought that
anybody would know some of the things I think or do. Maybe I tell you stuff
because you're so far away, and if you are shocked, I don't know it."
– Norma Fox Mazer, After the Rain
"'I guess, really thinking about it,
I always assumed when you missed someone, it was tangible,' Rachel says,
'something real you could grab and hold on to, but it's a not-there feeling.
The absence of ...' She takes her time answering ... 'The absence, I guess,
of whatever you're missing. For me, my grandfather. It's not some thing,
it's like space, an emptiness.'"
– Norma Fox Mazer, After the Rain
"We know of no culture that has said,
articulately, that there is no difference between men and women except
in the way they contribute to the creation of the next generation."
– Margaret Mead, Male and Female
"Roo says it's morbid, keeping a journal of nothing but sad lines. I say,
if you keep all the sad stuff in one place, there won't be as many surprises."
– Martha Moore, Angels on the Roof
"Yuki's thoughts wandered to Etsuko, her stomach big with child,
splitting the fish's stomach and taking out the red entrails."
– Kyoki Mori, Shizuko's Daughter
"I think that we often love someone because at least initially, that
person reminds us of someone else, someone we have loved before."
– Kyoki Mori, Shizuko's Daughter
"Years do that: they grind away at anger's sharp edges until one
day you find that what you hold in your heart isn't anger at all, but something
as blunt and elegant as understanding, or even forgiveness."
– Elizabeth Mosier, My Life as a Girl
"...a man who cannot be wounded is not a man whom a woman can choose to love."
– Garth Nix, "Under the Lake"
"She didn't know about the bruises, but she saw the way I threw myself
around in class, crashing to the floor, banging into walls when the music
was wild. I could spin and spin and fly all over the room, and nothing
mattered, nothing existed but the sheer swirling ecstasy of the dance and
the music. And when the dance was over, I had the bruises to remind me
that for a little while, I felt real — I was a real, whole person."
– Han Nolan, Dancing on the Edge
"While everyone around me seemed to have found themselves, I grew
more and more lost. While everyone else could hear their own voice in the
midst of the cacaphony, I grew more and more silent. I spent my evenings up
in my room, eating and studying with the radio on so I wouldn't hear the
others below and have to think about how I didn't, couldn't, fit in. I
wanted to tell Mam. I wanted her to know how I felt about our new life,
and I wanted her to care. I wanted to say to her, 'Okay, Mam, either I go
or they do, you choose,' but I was afraid she wouldn't choose me, and I
had nowhere else to go."
– Han Nolan, A Face in Every Window
"I fell upon my bed and prayed for emptiness. I didn't want to think,
or feel, or hurt anymore. I just wanted to lie there, numb, until it was
all over."
– Han Nolan, If I Should Die Before I Wake
"I stayed up through the first night right there in that chair and
watched the furniture and toys grow so big I thought they'd swallow me.
The flowers on my wallpaper turned into these lips with fangs that dripped
blood, and the toys and dolls on my shelves became live, breathing spiny
creatures that whispered and laughed: You're all alone, there's no one
left. No one."
– Han Nolan, If I Should Die Before I Wake
"I was seeing myself breathing hard chunks of air, in and out, in
and out. I saw myself in my baggy shirtdress that hung down to my ankles,
and in my clogs, hard, the bottoms worn on one side. I could see my bald
head, my skin stretched over my nose and my cheeks, and I knew this was
all I was. I was not a girl with dreams of someday becoming a great violinist,
or of getting married and having children. I was not a girl with a family,
or a house, or fancy clothes. I was not someone who belonged to a shul, or
who was known for her brown wavy hair with a strand that always jutted out
in the back. I could no longer identify myself by what I owned, or who I knew,
or what my dreams were. This — my body, my mind, my soul — was
all I was. It is all any of us are, and without the camouflage of my dreams
and possessions, I realized that everything I did, every thought I had, was
all I was. Here, in this place, in this skin, my actions and thoughts would
be magnified. It was all very simple. If I killed the guard, all of who I
was would be a murderer. If I showed love, all of me would be a lover. Who
then did I want to be?"
– Han Nolan, If I Should Die Before I Wake