Home > Author > Rene Denfeld
81 " The guards hate the priest. To them, men like the priest paper the sky with romantic tissue-paper legends, but down here below the earth, in this enchanted place, we know life cannot be contained on a slogan or a prayer tablet. We know that kindness rules with the fist and chains rule with a turn to the sky, that all humans require penance and without it we all seek punishment, over and over again, until the body and mind are satisfied and we die. "
― Rene Denfeld , The Enchanted
82 " She knelt over the grave, until her nose was touching the dirt. “When you are ready to inhabit a new skin,” she said, “we will be waiting for you. "
― Rene Denfeld , The Child Finder (Naomi Cottle, #1)
83 " Her courage frightens and amazes me. It make me hopeful for her. Is that what you call love? Is that what you call hope? "
84 " The lady hasn’t lost it yet—the sound of freedom. When she laughs, you can hear the wind in the trees and the splash of water hitting pavement. You can sense the gentle caress of rain on your face and how laughter sounds in the open air, all the things those of us in this dungeon can never feel. "
85 " The warden always seems to know which book to bring. When the sun is gunslinger blue, the warden brings a western. When rain slates against the towers and the world has gone hopeless with gray, it is Bible stories. When the halls ring with the cries of riot and the bars of my own cell rattle with pain, the warden drops a soft book on the floor, solace in its pages: the collected poems of Walt Whitman. And oh, my favorites, like the tastes of childhood. Every few months the warden passes me The White Dawn, and for a few precious days I traverse the open heavens on hard-packed moonlit snow and see the blue splashing arctic lights, and I fill my belly with frozen seal meat and laugh with my Inuit friends. "
86 " What if we are all capable of lying to ourselves? But the story didn’t bother Naomi. Instead it reassured her confirming that the stories we tell ourselves have more meaning than the facts. That doesn’t make them lies. Seeded with every myth was the emotional truth. "
― Rene Denfeld , The Butterfly Girl (Naomi Cottle, #2)
87 " If death row is a sharp punishment, life without parole can be an endless torture. "
88 " If there are ever times when I would regret the choice York is making, it is times like these, when life feels like another page waiting to get turned. "
89 " The moon, B had noticed, awakened the dawn, and so the two – like pale cousins – never saw each other. Even on the most hopeful of days the moon could only peep, from a distant sky, at the sun. "
90 " People had a drive to immortalize their past, even the evil stuff, like Abu Ghraib or the Holocaust. They liked to take pictures, keep journals, because they believed in what they were doing. No one, Naomi had learned, did evil without believing it was right at the time. Maybe this was why it was nearly impossible to talk them out of it? "
91 " she winds her way through gorgeous blue conifer forests, past glistening rivers and curves that give glimpses of heaven. "
92 " Sweet as sugar. And then he hardened. I can’t ’splain it another way. He was like sugar in a jar that hardens. And after a while you take it out, and it is one rock-solid lump "
93 " It will be people like us that save the world, she said: those who have walked the side of sorrow and seen the dawn. "
94 " I sit on my narrow bunk and caress my long yellow toenails and stare at my walls. "
95 " Anyway, time is more than counting days. On the outside, people think clocks tell them the time. They set an alarm for work and wake up to a blinking light that says six a.m. They look to an office wall to tell them if it is time to go home. The truth is, clocks don’t tell time. Time is measured in meaning. I better get up for work or It’s time to feed the baby. Or That was the year I got cancer or That is the day we celebrate your birthday. Or Remember when our father died or Let’s remember to plant turnips this spring. It is meaning that drives most people forward into time, and it is meaning that reminds them of the past, so they know where they are in the universe. "
― Rene Denfeld
96 " I'm afraid," she confessed, her voice quiet."Of what?""That if the box is opened I might want and want and never be filled." She took a breath. "That you will get tired of filling it." She paused and spoke her deepest fear, turning to his ear. "That you will use me and throw me away. "
97 " The look in her eyes is of a person who drank from the end of a gun barrel and found it delicious. "
98 " [...] and every time she says the word, it breaks her heart into pieces that she has to pick up in her hands and shove back in her chest. "
99 " Be careful the purpose doesn't destroy you. "
100 " Regrets?” Diane asked cheerfully. She made a gusty little sandwich out of crackers and cheese. "