Blessings Quotes
"In the fashion of the young, the two in the car, peering down the drive some months before, had convinced themselves that appearance was reality."
"Blessings was one of those few places that visitors always found, on their return, even more pleasing than the pleasant memories they had of it."
"The house had a squat and stolid quality, as though it had lain down to rest in the valley and grown middle-aged."
"But taken altogether it was something almost perfect, the sort of place that, from the road, promised plenty without pretense, ease without arrogance."
"The real world tried to intrude from time to time upon Blessings, but usually the real world failed."
"She felt as though they were somehow alone in the world, almost as though the house and its surroundings were a kind of island."
"The first light of dawn, the color of lemonade, was coming over the Blue Mountains when Skip Cuddy opened his eyes."
"Skip’s pants were lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. He tried to get two days of wearing out of a pair of pants."
"He’d discovered that nothing made him feel better than a nice neat stack of wood."
"He loved the goddamned job but he hated making the coffee every morning, and he couldn’t figure out why."
"He thought he must be getting the hang of it. A cupful of black beans, shiny as onyx beads."
"He never knew if Mrs. Blessing came downstairs herself as soon as she heard the cellar door close to pour a cup of coffee."
"Skip went around to the side of the big house, to the basement door that gave out onto the drive."
"It was hard to believe that God could concern himself with anyone in the city."
"At the country place she stood on the great lawn between the house and the road and raised her face up to the lambent blue."
"Above all the pond, the gardens, the land. The real world tried to intrude from time to time upon Blessings, but usually the real world failed."
"Skip felt that feeling when he opened the cardboard box and looked inside. 'A baby,' he said, as though if he spoke it he’d believe it."
"Lydia Blessing ate breakfast each morning in the summer months at a small drop-leaf table."
"From the road Blessings looked like a place where people would sit on the terrace at dusk, sip a drink and exult in the night breeze."
"The house sat, big and white, low and sprawling, in a valley of overgrown fields."
"Don’t speak to me about being frightened. I’ve been here all alone, no electricity, no power, no light, for who knows how long. And that hideous alarm sound."
"It’s impossible to imagine how someone could do everything that is needed around here and take care of an infant as well."
"People think all kinds of things about this place."
"It’s not the kind of thing you’d make a mistake about, ma’am."
"I would never have hired a man with a small child."
"You could leave her over here from time to time. There is a back bedroom with a cradle."
"I’m working on it. I figure most people get nine months to figure that out."
"She doesn’t have a name yet. That’s preposterous."
"It’s been sixty years since there’s been a baby in this house."
"Charles, if you must go to town you must leave her here with me."
"It’s very difficult to believe that someone would just abandon an infant in the middle of nowhere like that."
"Nonsense! I’ve lived in Mount Mason since long before you were born."
"Nonsense, Nadine, it’s just past noon. I won’t eat for an hour at least."
"It was as though all the people she had once been were contained inside her failing flesh."
"It seems to me that she has exceptionally long eyelashes."
"Maybe we all ought to talk more nonsense more of the time."
"People talk such nonsense to babies. I wonder why."
"You’d be surprised how much fun she has just looking around."
"Grow old, and learn to like it. Or live with it, at the very least."
"You get to be the mother by changing her and giving her a bath and walking her around in the middle of the night."
"She’s mine. You can feel it, can’t you? She’s mine."
"Don’t ever say that there’s not a whole lot of point in doing something unless we rip it down to the roofline and start over again."
"I can't face the dark. Toast me to a cinder and set me free as a bird. Promise."
"In the air the ashes looked just like glitter."
"What would you say was your greatest mistake in life?"
"I swear she's going to sit up by herself in a couple of weeks."
"Never ask a question that you already know the answer to."
"One benefit of an ordered life was that the order took on a life of its own."
"Most people turned out the way you would expect. But not all. Not by a long shot."
"I didn’t give her up. You gave her up. I gave her back."
"I think she liked people to be able to do what they wanted to do."
"Sometimes it’s difficult to figure people out, isn’t it."
"The dead deserted you; there were ghosts only among the living."
"There’s no substitute for these mature plantings."
"People love the idea of a place with a name."