Breathing Lessons Quotes
"We promised we wouldn't wash the dishes right after supper because that would take us away from our husbands; remember that?"
"Sometimes, hearing his grunt of approval as he read one of Ann's snappy answers, Maggie felt an actual pang of jealousy."
"She was struck- she was almost injured-by his handsomeness."
"One thing most people failed to realize was that many varieties of canned soup could be eaten cold straight from the tin, and they made a fairly balanced meal, too."
"But even the weather suited her purposes. This way, she could camp out if she had to. She could sleep in a haystack."
"She was only forty-eight and her health was perfect, and in spite of what some people might think, she was capable of anything she set her mind to."
"You could change husbands, but not the situation. You could change who, but not what."
"Apparently you were expected to remember on your own when your song was due."
"Never mind that you had to cast your thoughts back twenty-nine years."
"All this wanting and needing really didn't sound very nice."
"Once upon a time he'd been considered quite a catch."
"You'd never find her sitting icily erect while her husband, flushed with merriment, sang nonsense songs at the dinner table."
"No one mild and clumsy for Maggie, thank you; no one bumbling and well-meaning and sentimental, who would force her to play the heavy."
"He was too pliant, she meant; too supplicating."
"Someone mistakenly clapped—just two sharp explosions."
"His face was filmed with sweat and he fanned himself with the coupon."
"At the wedding they'd sat on folding chairs behind the altar."
"They began at the same split second, on exactly the same note, as if they were meant for each other."
"She felt like an orphaned, abandoned child, with her back held very straight and her round-toed pumps set resolutely together."
"You had to sort of step forth, she decided, and trust that the words would follow."
"The congregation faced decorously forward, except for those confounded little blonds."
"She thought time had gone into one of its long, slow, taffy-like stretches."
"They knew all the words straight through, which Maggie found surprising."
"The minister rose and said, 'We are gathered here today to mourn a grievous loss.'"
"She wondered how he could sit there, so impervious."
"He was a gentle, sympathetic, softhearted man, as she should have realized from the start."
"Compared to Ira she looked silly and emotional; anybody would have."
"She'd been so intent on not turning into her mother, she had gone and turned into her father."
"The future's not ours to see, Que sera sera."
"Serena seemed to be trying to put her daughter back together."
"Linda's face was streaming with tears, and Serena had set her at a distance and was patting down various parts of her clothes."
"But if you lived close by you wouldn't be spending days together."
"That's what it comes down to in the end, willy-nilly: just pruning and disposing."
"I have no idea," Maggie said. "Nobody tells me a thing."
"She got one of those diseases, some muscular something."
"What other song she possibly could have sung."
"Serena, who seemed to be trying to put her daughter back together."
"That poor, sad child, going to such lengths; I have to say I pity her."
"What did she want with those pointless, high-flown bits of information like the ones she'd learned in high school?"
"And then I thought, Nah, forget it. It's not my affair, I thought. Let them go."
"But I don't want to let go," Maggie said. "What kind of talk is that?"
"I wasn't doing fine without him! I was barely existing."
"Second grade is second grade, after all, the same all over."
"Might have been a sign, too," Mr. Otis said. "Might have been the Lord was trying to warn me."
"You can't know that." - "An understandable mistake," Ira said, "but all the same, a mistake."
"The fact is, we feel responsible," Ira told him. "What we said about your wheel wasn't so much a mistake as a plain and simple, um, exaggeration."
"Many would've let me ride on to my death," Mr. Otis said.
"It reminded me of a top, just before it stops spinning and falls over," Maggie said.
"Well, I'm sorry," she said stubbornly, "but I refuse to say I didn't see what I saw with my own two eyes."
"What we said about your wheel wasn't so much a mistake as a plain and simple, um, exaggeration."
"I know! I know!" she said. "But I can't help it, Ira; I really saw it wobble."
"You folks been awful nice about this." - Mr. Otis
"Mr. Otis's wife is mad at him for something he did in her dream," Maggie told Ira.
"That is always so sad to see," Maggie said about Lamont living alone and not courting anyone new.
"You mean what if I was held to blame for that?" Maggie asked. "Some thirty-year-old... kid I don't have the faintest interest in! I'm not the one who designed that dream!"
"It's probably going to be me that dies first," Mr. Otis said, "so I just ain't going to worry about that."
"Lord, Maggie, why do you always take things so personally?"
"He liked to know the names of things, the specific, accurate term that would sum an object up."
"Everything about her all at once saddened him—her skimpy haircut and her chapped lips and her thin face that was so homely and so sweet, if only people would see."
"It was not his having to support these people but his failure to notice how he loved them."
"Would she spend the rest of her days grieving for every loss equally—a daughter-in-law, a baby, a cat, a machine that dries the air out?"
"I drove her to her childbirth classes. I was her official labor coach."
"You're given years and years of lessons in how to balance equations, which Lord knows you will never have to do in normal life. But how about parenthood? Or marriage, either, come to think of it."
"I remember leaving the hospital with Jesse and thinking, 'Wait. Are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don't know beans about babies! I don't have a license to do this. Ira and I are just amateurs.'"
"If marriage was such a drag when she loved the guy, what would it be like when she didn't?"
"He was surprised she had grown, that's all it was."
"How could things have gotten so twisted? They started out perfectly simple."
"Anyone whose daddy is Jesse Moran is better off staying strangers."
"After all you done to free yourself, you want to go back to that boy and get snaggled up messy as ever."
"Mom, I'm twenty-five years old. I'm not that same little snippet I used to be."
"There was something so ... oh, so lucky about Jesse. He was so fortunate and funny and haphazard."
"Of course this was stealing, if you wanted to get picky about it-using someone else's phone to call out of state."
"With Mrs. Stuckey, there was no right way to do a thing."
"It's so ironic, because if you did want them to, you'd have to rack your brain for days and comb through special dictionaries."
"You never know when you might rustle up a game, she says."
"If things went the way she hoped they would this evening, she would have no need of plots for tomorrow."
"We have constitutional permission to do this, I'll have you know."
"Oh, Fiona. Please. Oh, tell me I didn't do wrong!"