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Tara Conklin QUOTES

Tara Conklin QUOTES

1 " There is a certain kind of man who is forever searching. He wanders from place to place, he looks hard into the eyes of women and men in every town, maybe he scratches the earth or wields a gun, remedies illnesses or writes books, and there is always a vague emptiness within him. It is the emptiness that drives him and he does not know even how to name that thing that might fill it. No idea of home or love or peace comes to him. He does not know, so he cannot stop. On and on he moves. and the emptiness blinds him and pulls at him and he is like a newborn baby searching for the teat, knowing it is there, but where?
And sometimes such a man is handed a gift. A gift of direction. A path that is marked for him and there, yes, this will ease your suffering, it is sure. This will cure you, it will fill you up, at least for a time. There will be a home, and love, there will no longer be the sorrow when you look at a cold night sky, the sorrow as the sun rises and the mist burns away. "

― Tara Conklin , The House Girl

2 " Two hundred and fifty years of nameless, faceless, forgotten individuals. Yes, they were America's founding fathers and mothers as much as the bewigged white men who laid the whips upon their backs. Why didn't Lina know their names? Why hadn't she studied their histories? Where was the monument? Where was the museum? What had they wished for and worked for and loved? "

― Tara Conklin

3 " I hope that wherever else I have failed, whatever harm I have caused to strangers and friends, that you may speak for me. Not before a pulpit or upon a stage. Not with words great or loud. But only to be, to persist, to live a life with pride and worth. In twenty years’ time, thirty, or forty I hope that you may sit upon the porch of your home, look out upon a greening field that you have tilled, see your children surrounding you with love, and think for a moment upon me. That is all now that I truly wish for. To be for a moment in your thoughts, when I have long passed from this earth, and perhaps in a way I may find my redemption, an earthly redemption, not everlasting, but scared nonetheless. "

― Tara Conklin , The House Girl

4 " It struck Linda suddenly that this was the middle of the night. Even here, in the city that never slept, most people now were sleeping. Law firm time was like casino time, only instead of an endless cocktail hour it was always a neon-bright afternoon. The dead center of the workday, all night long. "

― Tara Conklin , The House Girl

5 " Why didn't Lina know their names? Why hadn't she studied their histories? Where was the monument? Where was the museum? What had they wished for and worked for and loved? "

― Tara Conklin , The House Girl

6 " I was wrong to tell you that this is a story about the failures of love. No, it is about real love, true love. Imperfect, wretched, weak love. No fairy tales, no poetry. It is about the negotiations we undertake with ourselves in the name of love. Every day we struggle to decide what to give away and what to keep, but every day we make that calculation and we live with the results. This then is the true lesson: there is nothing romantic about love. Only the most naive believe it will save them. Only the hardiest of us will survive it.

And yet, And yet! We believe in love because we want to believe in it. Because really what else is there, amid all our glorious follies and urges and weaknesses and stumbles? The magic, the hope, the gorgeous idea of it. Because when the lights go out and we sit waiting in the dark, what do our fingers seek? Who do we teach for? "

― Tara Conklin , The Last Romantics

7 " Let your heart lead you, do not be afraid, for there will be much to regret if reason and sense and fear are your only markers "

― Tara Conklin , The House Girl

8 " The greatest works of poetry are the stories we tell about ourselves. "

― Tara Conklin , The Last Romantics

9 " If you live long enough and well enough to know love, its various permutations and shades, you will falter. You will break someone’s heart. Fairy tales don’t tell you that. Poetry doesn’t either. "

― Tara Conklin , The Last Romantics

10 " Over the years she had learned to fold down rising emotion just as she would fold the clean bedsheets, the sheet growing smaller and tighter with each pass until all that remained of that wide wrinkled expanse of cotton was a hard closed-in square. "

― Tara Conklin , The House Girl

11 " Our mother taught us how to protect ourselves from hurt but not how to determine what might be worth the risk. "

― Tara Conklin , The Last Romantics

12 " Just to sit for a moment, herself, no one claiming her time or her thoughts or the product of her mind and hands. What other word to call that if not freedom? "

― Tara Conklin , The House Girl

13 " Because when the lights go out and we sit waiting in the dark, what do our fingers seek? Who do we reach for? "

― Tara Conklin , The Last Romantics

14 " Keeping busy is the best defense against feeling sad. It’s simple, but it’s true. "

― Tara Conklin , The Last Romantics

15 " Better was largely irrelevant when it came to mothering because the entire enterprise relied on the presumption that one day, sooner than you thought, your child would become an entirely self-reliant, independent person who made her own decisions. That child wouldn't necessarily remember the Halloween costumes you made from hand six years running. Or maybe she did, but she resented you for it because she'd wanted store-bought costumes just like all her friends. It didn't matter how great a mother you tried to be; eventually every child waled off in to the world alone. "

― Tara Conklin , The Last Romantics

16 " Some people will choose, again and again, to destroy what it is they value most. "

― Tara Conklin , The Last Romantics

17 " didn’t matter how great a mother you tried to be; eventually every child walked off into the world alone. "

― Tara Conklin , The Last Romantics

18 " the greatest works of poetry, what make each of us a poet, are the stories we tell about ourselves. We create them out of family and blood and friends and love and hate and what we’ve read and watched and witnessed. Longing and regret, illness, broken bones, broken hearts, achievements, money won and lost, palm readings and visions. We tell these stories until we believe them, we believe in ourselves, and that is the most powerful thing of all. "

― Tara Conklin , The Last Romantics

19 " The love of your life is always the one you have betrayed the most. The love that defines you is the one upon whom you once turned your back. "

― Tara Conklin , The Last Romantics

20 " It’s possible to exist under any number of illusions, to believe so thoroughly in the presence of things you cannot see—safety, God, love—that you impose upon them physical shapes. A bed, a cross, a husband. But ideas willed into being are still ideas and just as fragile. "

― Tara Conklin , The Last Romantics