Jacqueline Kelly Quotes

I put on my thickest red flannel nightie and dove into bed. Mercifully, SanJuanna had taken the chill off the sheets with a warming pan. I intended to lie there for a while and take stock of my life. That's what you do at the end of the century, don't you? I think I actually fell asleep right away and only dreamed I was taking stock.

It's amazing what you can see when you just sit quietly and look.

By 1899, we had learned to tame the darkness but not the Texas heat.

It was the first morning of the first day of the new century. Snow blanketed the ground. Anything was possible.

Ahhh. Bed, book, kitten, sandwich. All one needed in life, really.

They all knew this, but this didn't stop them from good-naturedly crowding around the front door every time it opened, every single time, despite the fact that they were never -EVER- let into the house. I loved this particularly fine thing about dogs: Despite a lifetime of denied entrance, hope never died in their hearts.

I didn't want anyone getting close to me. I pushed people away. Built a wall around my heart to keep them out. I let one person take down the bricks, and I suppose it was a good idea, but, sometimes, he hurts me too. And it hurts so much worse then any other hurt I've felt because he is one of the very few that matter anymore.

And then it came to me, like the first shocking glimpse of the sun's disk rising over the horizon, what it was I did want to do. It was so obvious that I wondered why I hadn't seen it before. I only had to say it aloud. Did I have the courage to do that? To reveal it in the open air? ( ... ) 'I think,' I said, then stopped. 'I think maybe I want to go to the university.

My grandfather had given me Mr. Darwin's book to read. He had given me the possibility of a different kind of life. but none of it mattered. Instead there was The Science of Housewifery for me. I was blind; I was pathetic. The century was about to change, but my own little life would not change with it.

When two people love each other, they do not comply and does not dominate, only complement each other.

That night, when SanJuanna had cleared the main course and brought dessert in, my mother called for quiet and said,
"Boys, I have an announcement to make. Your sister made the apple pies tonight. I'm sure we will all enjoy them very much."
"Can I learn how, ma'am?" said Jim Bowie.
"No, J.B. Boys don't bake pies," Mother said.
"Why not?" he said.
"They have wives who make pies for them."
"But I don't have a wife."
"Darling, I'm sure you will have a very nice one someday when you're older, and she'll make you many pies. Calpurnia, would you care to serve?"
Was there any way I could have a wife, too? I wondered as I cut through the browned C and promptly shattered the entire crust.

One day I would have all the books in the world, shelves and shelves of them. I would live my life in a tower of books. I would read all day long and eat peaches. And if any young knights in armor dared to come calling on their white chargers and plead with me to let down my hair, I would pelt them with peach pits until they went home.

It was interesting that such a slight frame could contain so large a person.

On inspection it turned out to be a tiny toad, a quarter of an inch long, hopping mightily after an escaping millipede, itself no bigger than a thread, both going for all they were worth until they disappeared in the grass. Then a wolf spider, stratling in size and hairiness, streaked over the gravel, either chasing something smaller or being chased by something bigger, I couldn't tell which. I reckoned there must be a million minor dramas playing out around the place without ceasing. Oh, but they were hardly minor to the chaser and the chasee who were dealing in the coin of life and death. I was a mere bystander, an idler. They were playing for keeps.

Could anything top the promise and potential of a blank page? What could be more satisfying? Never mind that it would soon be crammed with awkward penmanship, that my handwriting inevitably sloped downhill to the right-hand corner, that I blotted my ink, that my drawings never came out the way I saw them in my head. Never mind all that. What counted was possibility. You could live on possibility, at least for a while.

I had never seen a real live dead person.

Eww, he said. I almost said the same thing, but unlike my brother, I had been annealed in the furnace of Scientific Thought. Scientists do not say such things aloud (although we may think them from time to time).

I don't have that many days left," he said as we sat together in the library. "Why would I want to spend them on matters of drainage and overdue accounts? I must husband my hours and spend every one of them wisely. I regret that I didn't come to this realization until I reached fifty years of age. Calpurnia, you would do well to adopt such an attitude at an earlier age. Spend each of your allotted hours with care.

It turned out to be a young Dasypus novemcinctus, a nine-banded armadillo, about the size of a small loaf of bread. Although they were becoming more common in Texas, I'd never seen one up close before. Anatomically speaking, it resembled the unhappy melding of an anteater (the face), a mule (the ears), and a tortoise (the carapace). I thought it overall an unlucky creature in the looks department, but Granddaddy once said that to apply a human definition of beauty to an animal that had managed to thrive for millions of years was both unscientific and foolish.

We had been so close to missing each other, he and I. He had turned out to be the greatest gift of all.

See, that's the thing about second chances. It's two people that are there for each other and support each other and care about each other no matter how much they want to deny it. It's about one person doing everything they can to make sure the other doesn't fall and vice-versa. Second chances are about holding on to that other persons hand no matter how hard they beg to let go.

But my mother's life was a never-ending round of maintenance. Not one single thing did she ever achieve but that it had to be done all over again, one day or one week or one season later. Oh, the monotony.

I don't understand the modern educational system at all."
"Neither do I. We have to learn sewing and knitting and smocking. In Deportment, they make us walk around the room with a book on our heads."
Granddaddy said, "I find that actually reading the book is a much more effective way of absorbing.