The Blind Assassin
“What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves — our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies. Now tha I’ve been one myself, I know”
from The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood pg. 94
The Blind Assassin
“Not enough rain, say the farmers. The cicadas pierce the air with their searing one-note calls; dust eddies across the roads; from the weedy patches at the verges, grasshoppers whir. The leaves of the maple hang from their branches like limp gloves; on the sidewalk my shadow crackles.”
from The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood pg. 83
The Blind Assassin
“Next is was time for the graduates to receive their diplomas. Up they trooped, solemn and radiant, in many sizes, all beautiful as only the young can be beautiful. Even the ugly ones were beautiful, even the surly ones, the fat ones, even the spotty ones. None of them understand this — how beautiful they are.”
from The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood pg. 38
The Blind Assassin
“Mother might be resting, or doing good deeds elsewhere, but Reenie was always there. She’d scoop us up and sit us on the white enamel kitchen table, alongside the pie dough she was rolling out or the chicken she was cutting up or the fish she was gutting, and give us a lump of brown sugar to get us to close our mouths. Tell me where it hurts, she’d say. Stop howling. Just calm down and show me where.
But some people can’t tell where it hurts. They can’t calm down. They can’t ever stop howling.”
from The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood pg. 2
The Blind Assassin
“A hot wind was blowing around my head, the strands of my hair lifting and swirling in it, like ink spilled in water.”
from The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood pg. 1
A Thousand Splendid Suns
“It wasn’t so much the whistling itself, Laila thought later, but the seconds between the start of it and the impact. The brief and interminable time of feeling suspended. The not knowing. The waiting. Like a defendant about to hear the verdict.”
from A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini pg. 24
The Historian
“For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me that history’s terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could have never told me. Only history itself can convince you of the truth. And once you’ve seen the truth — really seen it — you can’t look away.”
from The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova pg. 37
Chocolat
“…places do not lose their identity, however far one travels. It is the heart that begins to erode over time. The face in the hotel mirror seems blurred some mornings, as if by too many casual looks. By ten the sheets will be laundered, the carpet swept. The names on the hotel registers change as we pass. We leave no trace as we pass on. Ghostlike, we cast no shadow.”
from Chocolat by Joanne Harris pgs. 180-181
Chocolat
“Places all have their own characters, and returning to a city where you have lived before is like coming home to an old friend. But the people begin to look the same; the same faces recurring in cities a thousand miles apart, the same expressions. The flat, hostile stare of the official. The curious look of the peasant. The dull unsurprised faces of the tourists. The same lovers, mothers, beggars, cripples, vendors, joggers, children, policemen, taxi drivers, pimps. After a while one begins to feel slightly paranoid, as if these people were secretly following from one town to another, changing clothes and faces but remaining essentially unchanged, going about their dull business with half an eye slyly cocked at us, the intruders.”
from Chocolat by Joanne Harris pg. 180
Chocolat
“The air smelled sharp as new-cut wood, slicing low and sly around the angles of buildings.”
from Chocolat by Joanne Harris pg. 172
