Quotes by Christina Baker Kline

You can live for a long time inside the shell you were born in. But one day itll become too small.Then what? I ask.Well, then youll have to find a larger shell to live in.I consider this for a moment. What if its too small but you still want to live there?She sighs. Gracious, child, what a question. I suppose youll either have to be brave and find a new home or youll have to live inside a broken shell.

It is marvelous to be young on a big city street.

This life of ours can feel an awful lot like waiting.

Molly learned long ago that a lot of the heartbreak and betrayal that other people fear their entire lives, she has already faced. Father dead. Mother off the deep end. Shuttled around and rejected time and time again. And still she breathes and sleeps and grows taller. She wakes up every morning and puts on clothes. So when she says its okay, what she means is that she knows she can survive just about anything.

He reaches over and touches my necklace. You still have it. That gives me faith. Faith in what?God, I suppose. No, I dont know. Survival.

I want to say, Christina, that you are ... unusual. And somehow... her voice trails off. Your mind-- your curiosity-- will be your comfort.

How did I go from being the maiden in a fairy tale to a wretched old maids so quickly? It happened almost without my realizing it...

I have come to think thats where Heaven is, a place in the memories of other where our best selves live

Its a peculiar kind of dissatisfaction, a bittersweet nostalgia for a moment not yet past.

I want each day to last forever . . . Its a peculiar kind of dissatisfaction, a bittersweet nostalgia for a moment not yet past. Even in the midst of a pleasurable outing Im aware of how ephemeral it is.

If you really want to know me, I said, well have to start with the witches.

Molly is the opposite. So many things have gone wrong for her in her seventeen years that she’s come to expect it. When something does go right, she hardly knows what to think.

Ill play your fucking game. But I dont have to play by your rules.

When something terrible happens, a lifetime of small events and unremarkable decisions, of unresolved anger, and unexplored fears begins to play itself out in ways you least expect. Youve been going along from one day to the next, not realizing that all those disparate words and gestures were adding up to something, a conclusion, you didnt anticipate. And later, when you begin to retrace your steps you see that you will need to reach back further than you could have imagined, beyond words and thoughts and even dreams, perhaps to make sense of what happened.

Its as if she assumes everything will go right, and when it doesnt - which, of course, is pretty often - she is surprised and affronted.

This is like telling a person who has leapt off a cliff to be careful. I am already in midair.

I am acutely aware that like a slip of paper in the wind, something in his nature eludes my grasp.

That man would have chipped away at your heart bit by bit until there was nothing left. It may have been bruised, but at least its whole.

Its hard to say whats in my head. Its been a long time since anyone cared to ask.

Most people are remarkably resilient. Even those who have been through war or great loss often find reservoirs of strength. But the legacy of trauma is a heavy burden to bear.