Amanda Coplin Quotes

They were blessed, said Jane; they were going to give birth to themselves. It would be themselves they gave birth to, only better. That was why she and Della must work so hard to protect them, their children. In protecting the children Jane and Della would also (Jane explained this over and over again) save themselves -

Riding in the herd, the sound like one constant, endless sigh; some frantic and others calm, some remembering some wrong done to them while others wanted only to sleep, and each struggling with hunger and thirst; some horses pregnant, others desperate to copulate; and all moved forward as one body amid the heat and the dust.

He protected her, he placed himself between her and the world.

He had pulled out of that grief, eventually – out from under the suffocating weight of it. Suffering had formed him: made him silent and deliberate, thoughtful: deep.

But she did not know where the doubt, the fear, began. It had always been there, but she had sought to rearrange it within herself; and in the constant rearrangement was transformation.

The sorrow came from those two feelings - the happiness of company, the anxiety of interrupted solitude.

The odor of the room was baked fruit, beeswax, pine, and old newspapers.

In April the true labor began. He rose before dawn and was at work in the trees as the sun rose. On a ladder, with his shears, maneuvering into the farthest reaches of the understories. At times whistling, at times muttering to himself. But mostly silent. Always working in that calm, deliberate way that made it impossible to imagine that he would ever complete the row, not to mention the entire orchard, in time. How could he afford to be so careful? It's that it was just possible, but barely. The design, the organization he achieved in the rows, in each tree, pleased him like nothing else. It was his passion, his whole life.

She craved it for some reason- she would not look at it directly- that sense of despair.

Not only a few times, but every time he did not give in to his urge to go look for her, he resented the moment that came in its place. Even if the moment was beautiful and was something he valued, and made him who he was. He could not help but also long for that other life in which he lived with Della, even if she abused him.

She was both more assured and quieter, deeper. It was as if the distance she had traveled had ironed out some of her foolish impulsiveness, her flippancy.

She could strive for perfection only in certain, few things; beyond that, it was important only to be tidy.

He did not expect her to be happy - how that word lost meaning as the years progressed - but he only wished her to be unafraid, and able to experience small joys.

We do not belong to ourselves alone, she wanted to say, but there was no one to speak to.

The man said that a portion of track just up into the mountain pass had been damaged by a rockslide early that morning, and they had shut down the whole system for maybe as long as the rest of the summer. The man shook his head, incredulous, disgusted, but also delighted in the way that people are often delighted by bad news, or the opportunity to discuss bad news that does not immediately affect them.

When one is young, he thought, one thinks that one will never know oneself. But the knowledge comes later; if not all, then some. An important amount.

It was as if she had grown, changed, overnight; her hair was different, her eyes; the shade and texture of her flesh, her limbs; and, most disconcerting and delightful of all, she was beginning to speak. She increasingly talked back to him when he murmured to her, and he understood that she was becoming what she was destined to become, when he first held her in the open air of the world: her own person, her own independent and particular self. He marveled at it all. And what would she grow up to be like? What was inside her, already formed, that would draw forth with time, and what was it that she most needed him to teach her? Would she be amenable to his help, his advice in worldly matters? And what advice did he have to give her?

THERE CAME AGAIN, during that following spring and summer, the feeling that Angelene had almost forgotten, of being alone in the orchard, of being utterly herself.

He regarded the world - objects right in front of his face - as if from a great distance. For when he moved on the earth he also moved in other realms. In certain seasons, in certain shades, memories alighted on him like sharp-taloned birds: a head turning in the foliage, lantern light flaring in a room.

She was haunted by the possibility that she had missed her chance for happiness. But she had not missed her chance, she told herself, for her chance would not let her get away so easily. Each morning she was fortified by hope: the future loomed.

She revered solitude, but only because there was the possibility of breaking it. Of communing at last with another.

She was becoming what she was destined to become ... : her own person, her own independent and particular self.

You belong to the earth and the earth is hard.

The sound was loud and soft at the same time, like the sound upon which other sound was built. You didn't hear the horses until you listened for them; and then they were very loud.

He did not go after her himself, but those months after he fell out of the tree, though his physical wounds more or less healed - though he walked with a slight limp afterward - a kind of vacancy, a silence, hung around him, like a mantle on his shoulders.

How like the orchard she was. Because of her slowness and the attitude in which she held herself -seemingly deferent, quiet-it appeared even a harsh word would smite her. But it would not. She was like an egg encased in iron. She was the dream of the place that bore her, and she did not even know it.