Light On Snow Quotes
"The stillness of the forest is always a surprise, as if an audience had quieted for a performance."
"Beneath the hush I can hear the rustle of dead leaves, the snap of a twig, a brook running under a skin of ice."
"The air, dry and still, hurts my nose as I breathe."
"My father says, 'I feel like a dog let out to exercise at the end of the day.'"
"What matters is that the work keeps him busy and is unlike anything he has ever done before."
"We move by the smell of smoke. Sometimes we have the scent, and sometimes we don’t."
"The magnitude of the waste was unbearable, Clara’s perfect body a unique torment only a jealous god could have devised."
"His grief has no texture now—no tears, no ache in the throat, no rage. It is simply darkness, I think, a cloak that sometimes makes it hard for him to breathe."
"Finding her might be the single most important thing my father and I have ever done."
"In the summer they are full of mosquitoes and blackflies, and I always have to spray myself with Off."
"Good luck, I’m beginning to discover, is just as baffling as the bad. There never seems to be a reason for it—no sense of reward or punishment. It simply is—the most incomprehensible idea of all."
"We don’t have a television, and we don’t get the newspaper."
"I have an easel and paints in my room and a chair that can be made into a single bed on the rare occasion I have a friend come to visit."
"In the afternoon, while I’m reading, I hear a dripping that sounds like a summer rain."
"All the wood for his furniture comes from his acreage: walnut and oak and maple; pine and cherry and tamarack."
""Dad," I say. "Why did he put the baby in a sleeping bag if he meant to kill her?" My father looks up at the bare tree limbs. "I don’t know," he says. "I guess he didn’t want her to be cold.""
""That doesn’t make any sense," I say. "None of it makes any sense.""
""It’s like those fairy tales my wife used to read the kids," Sweetser says. "Carpenter goes into the woods and finds a baby.""
""We might have had plans. We might have been going somewhere." "Dad," I say, my voice notched up to incredulity, "we never go anywhere.""
"My father does a 180 and heads for Butson’s Market, a store further out of town that he can sometimes get in and out of without running into anyone he knows."
"The cracks resound like gunshots—some muffled, some as sharp as fireworks."
""Dad," I say, "maybe you should shave." "I’m thinking of growing a beard." He rubs his chin. "Maybe you should shave.""
"At school, I am famous. Though the papers haven’t mentioned my name, everyone seems to know that I was there when the baby was found."
""Did you like your job when you worked in New York City?" "I did, Nicky," he says. "Yes, I did.""
"The snow at the windows makes no sound. The woman’s hand, on the rung of the chair, is as white as a pearl."
"I don’t even want to know you exist," my father says.
"It’s not like in the movies or in books. It’s ugly, and it’s frightening."
"It’s supposed to be a big storm. Biggest of the season, they’re saying, but they’re always wrong."
"Do our best to try to make a go of it," he said.
"You could lose your power in this," Warren says. "We could," my father says.
"Color rises to and recedes from her face as if she were periodically flooded by waves of shame."
"We dine to the sounds of the wind outside, and once or twice the lights flicker, reminding us that we could lose the power at any minute."
"No one has touched me this way since my mother died."
"Even when I wasn’t actively thinking of my mother, I’d be blindsided at odd intervals."
"The world is completely still, as if resting after its long battle the night before."
"Sometimes the lectures were about scientific or historic matters, but often they were moral in nature."
"I tried to cover over the gouges in the wood with my spit."
"Before the accident my father was famous for his lectures."
"I had not outgrown the need to be near the present that was being opened."
"Clara, immune to the excitement, had so exhausted herself with her fretting that she fell asleep as we sang 'Happy Birthday' to her."
"Few events in a child's life are as subtly unsettling as a holiday dinner with a family not one’s own."
"Once inside the house, my father tossed his keys on the kitchen counter."
"I am curious about where Charlotte will go when she leaves us."
"She holds it there for what seems like minutes."
"I have witnessed something I shouldn’t have witnessed, seen something I shouldn’t have seen."
"I am simply the guide. I have no place here except to show her the way home."
"I was sure that she was saying, 'Hey Sis—catch you later when I can see and talk.'"
"There are two scorch marks in the wood floor where sparks landed when a log toppled."
"The inside of the fireplace is black with chimney soot."
"Her hair is freshly brushed, and her skin is rosy in the firelight."
"Wow," I say, my generic response to all statements."
"My father serves up the scrambled eggs. I’m salivating from the pungent smell of the bacon."
"You feel the baby kick," she says. "It’s an inside tickle, like gas bubbles moving around. But different."
"The beads in the box flicker and catch the firelight."
"The last sound I hear is that of my father stomping the snow from his boots in the back hallway."
"It is a simple thing, but my father and I have gone a long time without it."
"I don’t care. I want to be an accomplice to Charlotte’s life."
"Don’t forget the beer and cookies for Santa."
"You could live with us. What would be wrong with that?"
"I hate good-byes. Why is everybody always leaving me?"
"I just want my life back! Is that too much to ask?"
"Never have unprotected sex, and never, ever get into a car with a driver who’s been drinking."