Kim Liggett Quotes

Just seeing the display makes me realize how much we've lost out here, but maybe we had to destroy everything in order for something to be born anew. From death there is life.

And I wonder if this is the magic taking over. Is this how it starts - the slip of the tongue? A loss of respect? Is this how I become a monster the men whisper of? I turn and run up the stairs before I do something I regret.

She's so incredibly grateful, but she shouldn't have to feel grateful for this-for being treated like a basic human being. None of us should.

Or Amy Dumont. Delicate, sweet. She would make for a docile wife, but her hips are too narrow, beddable to be sure, but not sturdy enough to withstand childbirth. Of course, some men like breakable things. They like to break them.

But a flower is never just a flower.

That's the problem with letting the light in - after it's been taken away from you, it feels even darker than it was before.

Sometimes I feel like we might burn down the world to cindery bits, with our love, our rage, and everything in between.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm so accustomed to struggling that anything else feels foreign to me, like something I'm not supposed to feel.

The things we do to girls. Whether we put them on pedestals only to tear them down, or use them for parts and holes, we're all complicit in this. But everything touches everything else, and I have to believe that some good will come out of all this destruction.

...the women wear clothes of beet-dyed linen. It reminds me of our red ribbons. Maybe it's a symbol that they've bled...that they're open for business.

I shadowed my father a million times before, watching him sneak off to the outskirts, but it never occurred to me to follow my mother - that she would have a life of her own.

We all have good and evil in our blood, what we do with it is up to us.

What at first seemed like harmless tasks turned into something infinitely more dangerous. But isn't that how every horrible thing but it begins? Slow. Insipid. A twisting of the screw.

I think growing up is one very long grace year. I mean it's brutal for girls, right? We place this impossible set of standards on them, and project all of our fear and desire on them, and when they falter, they're entirely to blame.

--An Interview with the Author at the end of the book

Maybe the reason no one speaks of the grace year is because of us. How could the men live among us, lie with us, let us care for their children, knowing the horrors we inflict upon one another...alone...in the wilderness...in the dark?

It's good to be afraid," I said. "It means you still have something to live for.

A person is made up of all the little choices they make in life. The choices no one ever sees.

It feels like freedom, but we know it's a lie. This is how they break us. They take everything away, our very dignity, and anything we get in return feels like a gift.

When you fall in love, you will carve out your heart and throw it into the deepest ocean. You will be all in - blood and salt.

In the county, everything they take away from us is a tiny death. But not here . . ." She spreads her arms out, taking in a deep breath. "The grace year is ours. This is the one place we can be free. There's no more tempering our feelings, no more swallowing our pride. Here we can be whatever we want. And if we let it all out," she says, her eyes welling up, her features softening, "we won't have to feel those things anymore. We won't have to feel at all.

I want to believe we can be different, but when I look around the church, at the women comparing the length of their braids, reveling in another woman's punishment, scheming and clawing for every inch of position, I can't help thinking the men might be right. Maybe we're incapable of more. Maybe without the confines placed upon us, we'd rip each other to shreds, like a pack of outskirt dogs.