Trail Of Broken Wings Quotes
"With approximately seven billion people in the world, I wonder how one person’s voice can have such an effect."
"The unknown is the hardest. Which might explain why we try so hard to rule our worlds. It is the only hope we have to make sense of our lives."
"Every place I have been, memorialized forever on glossy paper. Through the prism of a camera lens, I have seen the beauty of the world."
"No matter how far I run, I cannot seem to escape my shadow."
"I am a grown woman, capable of making my own choices, but there is no choice to be made."
"Good fortune has to be made—it is not given."
"Her sisters, Trisha and Sonya, watched her, learning from her example."
"We learned the steps of this dance years ago, my mother and I tiptoeing around Marin’s words."
"You cannot keep someone who has already left you behind."
"No matter what I needed or wanted, Sonya put herself first; I was last."
"The secrets are demanding to be free, heard by the world. Yet, I am not ready."
"The only acceptable answer is an apology for choosing to walk alone rather than among them."
"As long as you keep running, they can never catch you. Never get caught. Never, ever get caught."
"But little does he know the war has already been fought."
"Work demanding her attention is her only reprieve from the father who lies dying."
"Once born, Sonya became Marin’s responsibility."
"Tension teases up Marin’s neck like a spider with claws."
"Each choice, each activity guaranteed to Marin that she was not a product of her past."
"What friends would want you to sacrifice your future for the sake of themselves?"
"The realization that her father might never emerge from his coma—that the man who defined her life was now losing his—jars her."
"That life is not what happens to you, but what you make happen."
"It believes itself weak because it is smaller. Less powerful. Maybe nature doesn’t trust it to stand up against its wrath and therefore demands others protect it."
"Its role as a shelter makes it the most powerful tree of all."
"Every time I tried eating sweets afterward, I thought of those kids. I lost my taste for it."
"You don’t need me," she says. "You’re fine. You have everything."
"Do you want this?" I ask, gesturing around me. "No," she says. "Not anymore."
"It’s not about me," she says. We both know she’s lying.
"Because there was nothing I had to give you."
"Then help me watch him die. Tell me how to say good-bye."
"Because you’re my sister," she says. "And I couldn’t have survived our childhood without you."
"When you lose someone there is a grieving process. Shock, anger, despair, among a multitude of other emotions."
"But what about when someone is alive yet wants nothing to do with you? Is there a mourning process in place then, or do you hold on to hope like a life raft in the abyss?"
"I won’t die with you," Ranee says to Brent’s still body. "So many years I wished I were dead that now I choose to live."
"Watching them, I envy their hopes and dreams. Their belief that anything is possible. That the future is theirs to determine, to create. They are invincible; they are sure."
"Throughout pregnancy, there is both fear and anticipation. You pray for a healthy child without a real concept of what that means."
"But the real job—raising them—begins after they come home from the hospital."
"Every day I would comb their hair, rearrange their clothes, and settle them into their make-believe dollhouse. They were perfect with perfect lives."
"People have children for varied reasons. To make a family whole, to give meaning to their lives, or to re-create themselves, but this time do a better job."
"It’s impossible to give someone the world. You can show them glimpses of yours, hope they join you in it, but to give them the world means you have to be willing to give up your own."
"When an adult has been abused as a child, he or she lives life always expecting the other shoe to drop."
"Memories start to filter in, crowding out the conversation."
"I hear parents complain that they forget about one another standing under the same umbrella with their children. I wonder what they would say if I told them standing together, without children, can tear you apart."
"Parents understand their capacity, accept their limitations. They are only able to give so much of themselves to another, to love one person unconditionally."
"But introspection is not Marin’s friend. Instead, blind fury propels her."
"I am not afraid of my husband. I know women who are."
"Some moments in your life you wish never happened; you would do anything to take them back."
"Every nine seconds, a woman is assaulted or beaten in the United States."
"An illness? They can start with bruises, right?"
"It is an odd thing to share burdens with another human being."
"That might work better for the adults. With the children, maybe gather a few at a time and show them the basics."
"Children, blameless from birth, harmed for no reason."
"At least one of us was doing more than surviving."
"We followed her rule, her decisions, like chicks to a hen."
"It’s comforting to know that someone in my life knows what they are doing."
"It is easy to forget that I am allowed to ask why she is sad."
"She welcomed our strength, used it to buoy her when she had none of her own."
"We knew never to interrupt—to stand up for our loved one."
"Like statues inside a snow globe, we are frozen, emotionless to anyone watching."
"But when did we decide to keep our secrets from one another?"
"That is a mother’s job, right? To protect her children?"
"I wonder if I would choose my sisters as my friends."
"Now maybe Gia can understand the hell they have been living through."
"Peace became my motivation, and I did everything to maintain it."
"In my day, we didn’t have such fancy things." William turns the camera over in his hand, inspecting it from every angle.
"No," Dad answered with complete confidence. "There’s no such thing."
"Then y’all going to spend the rest of eternity in hell," the woman answered with a rare surety.
"I’m glad you did." I want to reach for her hand, the one with the nails digging into her forearm, but I don’t. "What happened?"
"It was her boyfriend." Shame fills me at revealing this new family secret. One that can be added to the skeletons already spilling into our lives. "That’s all I know."
"But why not make the best of it while we can?"
"I’m not paying five hundred dollars an hour to my attorney for us to talk."
"Sometimes things happen that don’t make sense."
"No matter how hard we fight, we can’t escape it."
"But he didn’t do anything. He didn’t mean to hurt me. It wasn’t his fault."
"He beat the girl before you. Made her his own personal punching bag. Was it her fault too? Was it?"
"I did what was best for you. Do you have any idea what could have happened to you? You were ruining your life. I saved you."
"You left me with nothing and I hate you. I hate you so much."
"The smartest survived; everyone else was left behind."
"This isn’t about what I did, it’s that you didn’t think to do it."
"Our daughter trusting us. Believing in us. She was hurting and you just hurt her more."
"I can’t stop thinking about you. You’re always on my mind."
"To live their life out as comfortably as they can."
"If you and I went out, we would have dinner a few times, catch a movie. I would laugh at your jokes and you would listen as I told you about my experiences traveling."
"Everything my daughter is, is because of me."
"I did it all for her. I did what I thought was right for her life."
"If it comes to my daughter, everything takes a backseat. Including us."
"I like the hard way better, because then you know who you really are."
"She never told anyone of her wishes, not even the women she called friends in the community, for fear of their reaction."
"The day passed quietly, until the silence became deafening."
"Normally, Ranee would have rushed to do his bidding, anxious to keep him happy. But the day was weighing on her."
"It was to save her," Ranee finally spoke up, needing to admit it aloud. "You would have destroyed her if she stayed here."
"I have no say in the matter. I gave that up when I had the IUD implanted."
"I can still remember making love on them when they first arrived."
"I wonder how many other habits of Mama’s I have made my own."
"It doesn’t matter," Brent whispered. A lone tear fell from his eye over his cheek."
"It is all a game, Marin. Life, I mean. You must know how to win it. That’s all that matters."
"I’ve done everything for her. My success was supposed to be her beacon, but it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough."
"Sure she has lost her daughter, Marin accepts she has nothing left in a life that was destroyed years ago."
"In the silence, you can hear our breaths, hers steady, mine loud, ragged."
"I felt older than my years, and yet I couldn’t help but wonder how much of my childhood got frozen in time."
"The mind is very powerful. It knows what we can’t handle, what we can’t process."