Serena Quotes
"Time had seemed caught within the sweeping circle of watch and clock hands—passing hours and minutes unable to break free to become passing days."
"It struck Pemberton that males in these mountains rarely stood upright. Instead, they leaned into some tree or wall whenever possible."
"Pemberton’s a man unafraid of challenges, which is why I married him."
"Pemberton felt desire quicken his pulse, summon the image of the first time he’d watched her ride at the New England Hunt Club."
"What made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting."
"Fire is indeed an excellent purifier after contagion, but I suspect burning the bed sheets would have sufficed."
"It amazed Rachel how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until you could finally endure it."
"If you could gather up all the severed body parts and sew them together, you’d gain an extra worker every month."
"He’d felt incredibly lucky they’d found one another, though Serena had already told him their meeting wasn’t mere good fortune but inevitability."
"How far back could you trace the links in such a chain, he wondered—past the Harmon girl being chosen that night to bring his food, past the tree shattering a man’s backbone due to a badly notched trunk, past that to an axe unsharpened because a man drank too much the night before, past that to why the man had gotten drunk in the first place? Was it something you never found the end to?"
"Dwelling on the past, the very thing Serena had shown him he, and they, had no need of."
"A timber rattlesnake’s venom destroys blood vessels and tissue. Even if the victim is fortunate enough to survive the initial bite, lasting damage is incurred."
"You can make sport of it, but this unnatural weather is a certain sign we’re in the last days."
"My daddy said the wooly worms were wearing a thicker coat all summer and we’re sure enough seeing the truth of it."
"The most beautiful creatures are so often the most injurious."
"I would argue that’s part of their beauty."
"I’ve never seen a woman shoot a bear before."
"All I’m saying is there is a lot more to this old world than meets the eye."
"You can’t see air, but when it’s all around you sure enough know it."
"It’s no wonder it takes not just the earth but the sky to contain it."
"All we’ll ever need is within each other."
"I tried not to, I just couldn’t find a way to stop myself."
"You be the one to tell her that she’s hired. Just make it clear she has no claim on us. Her child either."
"The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee, thou that dwellest in the cleft of the rock, whose habitation is high, that saith in his heart, who shall bring me down." - Obadiah
"It’s time to make our heir," Serena said.
"The world lies all before us, Pemberton."
"Brazil. Mahogany forests the same quality as Cuba’s, except we’ll have them all to ourselves."
"We need Harris’ money," Serena said. "We’ll have to humor him, this time."
"You’ll be surprised, Doctor, what a man such as Galloway can do with just one hand. He’s very resourceful, and very willing."
"Electricity, like the dog, is one of man’s best friends."
"He ain’t a good enough shot to do it on purpose."
"Jobs or a pretty view," Harris said. "I like that."
"No doubt a reference to some brush arbor meeting where his soul would be saved for the contents of his billfold."
"Saved by a woman, and thus honor bound to protect that woman and do her bidding the rest of his life."
"What I believe doesn’t matter. Galloway believes it."
"They’s a philosophical reason the positive outlook is called a sunny disposition."
"Your blood merged with mine. That’s all we ever hoped for anyway."
"It’s merely a bunch of baubles. Expensive baubles, but of what use?"
"But you’re the one who looks a little peaked. Are you all right?"
"My hopes were something here, not Brazil."
"If he’d been forthright with us, we’d have figured it out."
"It’s like an infection, Pemberton. If you don’t cauterize it, then it spreads."
"Whether it’s right wasn’t my question. Is it what we want?"
"As if to acknowledge the easy transition between the quick and the dead in the timber camp, no gate led into the graveyard and no fence surrounded it."
"The timber that had brought them here and killed them, and now enclosed them, also marked most of the graves."
"A fellow used to could count on at least a pay stub before getting killed."
"Your people not knowing where you’re buried, that’s a terriblesome thing. There’ll be never a flower nor teardrop touch his grave."
"They buried him right where he fell, but leastways his mama known where he was laid."
"That others can make us vulnerable and the sooner such vulnerabilities are dealt with the better."
"If you say a word, one single word, I swear to God I’ll kill you."
"She’d just stepped inside, leaving the door open."
"Rachel crossed the tracks and soon was on the sidewalk, in her pocket one of the twenty-dollar bills to buy groceries."
"What she saw first was absence, a gap in the human form where wrist and hand should be."
"Don’t forget these. He’d be put out something awful if you left them."
"Rachel dreamed that she and Jacob stood in a cornfield where only a single green stalk grew."
"Rachel spooned her body tighter around Jacob’s and tried to fall back asleep but sleep did not come."
"I think this is what the end of the world will be like."
"The world is ripe, and we’ll pluck it like an apple from a tree."