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1 " The dinner was a huge production, with kids stashed in the den to eat off card tables like a collection of understudies who dreamed of one day breaking into the dining room. "
― Ann Patchett , The Dutch House
2 " I had a mother who left when I was a child. I didn’t miss her. Maeve was there, with her red coat and her black hair, standing at the bottom of the stairs, the white marble floor with the little black squares, the snow coming down in glittering sheets in the windows behind her, the windows as wide as a movie screen, the ship in the waves of the grandfather clock rocking the minutes away. "
3 " Do you think it’s possible to ever see the past as it actually was? "
4 " But we overlay the present onto the past. We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we’re not seeing it as the people we were, we’re seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered. "
5 " Girls and their dates still got dressed to go to the Apollo for amateur night but by 1968 pretty much every representation of hope in the country had been put up against a wall and shot. "
6 " Maeve was an Icelandic truck driver at heart, no weather stopped her "
7 " Because I was fifteen and generally an idiot, I thought that the feeling of home I was experiencing had to do with the car and where it was parked, instead of attributing it wholly and gratefully to my sister. "
8 " I see the past as it actually was," Maeve said. She was looking at the trees."But we overlay the present onto the past. We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we're not seeing it as the people we were, we're seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered. "
9 " There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you'd been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you're suspended knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself. "
10 " And so I made the decision to change. It might seem like change was impossible, given my nature and my age, but I understood exactly what there was to lose. It was chemistry all over again. The point wasn’t whether or not I liked it. The point was it had to be done. "
11 " We had made a fetish out of our misfortune, fallen in love with it. "
12 " That night in my sister’s bed I stared at the ceiling and felt the true loss of our father. Not his money or his house, but the man I sat next to in the car. He had protected me from the world so completely that I had no idea what the world was capable of. I had never thought about him as a child. I had never asked him about the war. I had only seen him as my father, and as my father I had judged him. There was nothing to do about that now but add it to the catalog of my mistakes. "
13 " There would never been an end to all the things I wished I'd asked my father. After so many years I thought less about his unwillingness to disclose and more about how stupid I'd been not to try harder. "
14 " Fluffy always said there was no greater luxury for a woman than to have a window over the sink. "
15 " Thinking about the past impeded my efforts to be decent in the present. "
16 " You have to serve those who need to be served, not just the ones who make you feel good about yourself. "
17 " We were all so young, you know. We were still our best selves. "
18 " Disappointment comes from expectation, "
19 " We had stepped into the river that takes you forward. "
20 " There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you'd been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to lean on is not yet in place, and for a moment you are suspended, knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself. "
