Amy And Isabelle Quotes
"A woman should learn to take a compliment gracefully."
"You have three lines here. Three mere lines. And yet look at the beauty they hold."
"If you had any sensitivity, you would look at this and weep."
"Life could get dull, and you had to look forward to something."
"A deep red hole she threw Life Savers into and potatoes and hamburgers and chocolate cakes, and anything else."
"Those days Amy had stayed at Esther Hatch’s house while Isabelle was at work. An awful place, that Hatch house was—a run-down farmhouse on the outskirts of town, filled with babies and cats and the smell of cat urine."
"But there was something about this Amy, Bev thought, gazing discreetly while she fanned herself, that wasn't quite right, went further than just a dull job in a hot room."
"She saw how he ran his fingers slowly over his beard, a spot that was almost reddish in color, right below his lip."
"But an ache stayed inside her. And a faint reverberating hum of something close to joy lived on the outer edges of her memory, some kind of longing that had been answered once and was simply not answered anymore."
"Except to sleep, and in this heat that wouldn't be happening soon."
"April is the cruellest month, mixing memory with desire."
"That April stuff. It’s good. I mean, I like that."
"The noise was sudden beneath the tires and then just as suddenly gone."
"She was thinking she ought to wear perfume in case she was giving off the same damp-brick odor her mother sometimes had."
"Amy, looking through narrowed eyes at the house she lived in, tried to imagine what it looked like to Mr. Robertson."
"For years this had been her secret: She had wanted a different mother."
"Arlene eyed the cover of Madame Bovary. 'Kingswood. About an hour from here.'"
"The sun danced on the water and warm breezes blew along the banks and people ate their lunches on park benches."
"Isabelle, stepping out to sweep her porch steps, felt absolutely certain that some wonderful change was arriving in her life."
"The screen door, in the steady husky chirping from the marsh, in the fragrant damp earth surrounding right now the delicate roots of hepaticas and starflowers."
"In the early morning it snowed. A sudden April snowstorm that dropped two inches of perfect white snow onto everything."
"She did not know if she was waiting for her kidnapper or her mother, or which one would arrive first."
"The sky was vast and blue, lawns vibrant with their tender shoots of grass."
"Isabelle, living in her little house beneath the pines, heard the peepers in the marsh nearby."
"It took Amy a while to get back to sleep, too, but for her it was okay, because in the dark she smiled slightly, thinking of Mr. Robertson."
"The last day of school was a Thursday, the twenty-fifth of June."
"Such endurance—one headstone showed the name of Endurance Tibbetts—had bred men and women whose Puritan features and pale blue eyes even now remained; they were not alarmists."
"Church attendance rose; without exactly forming the thought, people were praying for the appeasement of God."
"The office room at the mill certainly held the unmistakable sense of lassitude."
"‘You can get whiplash working here,’ she said, foggy-eyed and startled."
"‘I’m sorry.’ The girl almost whispered. ‘I never know what to say to anyone.’"
"‘But I like that,’ the girl said, with such spontaneous feeling that she seemed surprised at herself."
"‘Well, good. Then we’re all set.’ And it was somehow understood they were now friends."
"‘They don’t want to,’ Rosie said. ‘They just do that on their own, switch back and forth like that.’"
"‘Hears me talking like this, you watch, it won’t give me nothing,’ Arlene cast a wary eye at the large contraption."
"Never get lipstick on your teeth. If I see a woman with lipstick on her teeth, I always think to myself, She’s probably crazy. Probably nuts."
"‘You know you’ll always be loved, don’t you?’ He loved her. He had told her so."
"But I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t ever want to talk to you again."
"‘It’s the most important day in a girl’s life,’ Arlene said. ‘That’s why.’"
"‘I’m just wondering if someday she’ll be sorry,’ Isabelle said, thinking about decisions made in youth."
"‘You don’t know anything about the world.’ It was an accusation that could have been made against her own mother."
"‘Clean it up.’ Her mother stepped back, panting. Screeching suddenly: ‘Clean up the mess!’"
"I can see how it would spoil all your memories."
"I’ve never seen things at work this unpleasant before."
"It’s pretty queer, for a woman to go around slapping the people she works with."
"Strange to think her daughter lay upstairs right now in bed."
"Every time Dottie walked by Isabelle’s desk she would reach down and lightly touch Isabelle’s arm."
"You take the kindness offered, letting it seep as far in as it could go, and the remaining dark crevices you carried around with you, knowing that over time they might change into something almost bearable."
"You kept going; people kept going; they had been doing it for thousands of years."
"God worked in mysterious ways, he said, and His will would be done."
"She wanted to tell him how much she loved him, and she thought in the morning she would tell him that, but in the morning he was gone."
"He knew it was wrong. And he didn’t even care—that was the thing. Well, he did, but he didn’t. Because he was so happy! He didn’t care what it cost! He was happier than he had ever been."
"The way to eat an elephant was one bite at a time."
"People kept going; they had been doing it for thousands of years."
"The way to eat an elephant... But I got some indigestion with this one, I can tell you."
"Most of them did the best they could. Is that fair to say? Most of them did the best they could, the people of Shirley Falls."
"Knowing that her child had grown up frightened... I’ve been frightened of you."
"But why, thought Peg Dunlap, rushing down the street, should love be so hard?"
"All the love in the world couldn’t prevent the awful truth: You passed on who you were."
"It was bewildering to Isabelle. Bewildering that you could harm a child without even knowing, thinking all the while you were being careful, conscientious."
"But it was a terrible feeling. More terrible than having Avery Clark forget to come to her house."
"For the rest of her life she would remember this day the way one remembers the last moments spent with a loved one."