Orphan Train QUOTES

81 " My dad gave me these charms, and each one represents something different. The raven protects against black magic. The bear inspires courage. The fish signifies a refusal to recognize other people’s magic.” “I never knew those charms had meaning.” Absently, Vivian reaches up and touches her own necklace. Looking closely at the pewter pendant for the first time, Molly asks, “Is your necklace—significant?” “Well, it is to me. But it doesn’t have any magical qualities.” She smiles. “Maybe it does,” Molly says. “I think of these qualities as metaphorical, you know? So black magic is whatever leads people to the dark side—their own greed or insecurity that makes them do destructive things. And the warrior spirit of the bear protects us not only from others who might hurt us but our own internal demons. And I think other people’s magic is what we’re vulnerable to—how we’re led astray. So . . . my first question for you is kind of a weird one. I guess you could think of it as metaphorical, too.” She glances at the tape recorder once more and takes a deep breath. “Okay, here goes. Do you believe in spirits? Or ghosts?” “My, that is quite a question.” Clasping her frail, veined hands in her lap, Vivian gazes out the window. For a moment Molly thinks she isn’t going to answer. And then, so quietly that she has to lean forward in her chair to hear, Vivian says, “Yes, I do. I believe in ghosts.” “Do you think they’re . . . present in our lives?” Vivian fixes her hazel eyes on Molly and nods. “They’re the ones who haunt us,” she says. “The ones who have left us behind. "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

82 " See the interlaced strands?' She touched the raised pattern with a knobby finger. 'These trace a never-ending path, leading away from home and circling back. When you wear this, you'll never be far from the place you started. "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

83 " Molly touches Vivian’s shoulder, frail and bony under her thin silk cardigan. She half turns, half smiles, her eyes brimming with tears. Her hand flutters to her clavicle, to the silver chain around her neck, the claddagh charm—those tiny hands clasping a crowned heart: love, loyalty, friendship—a never-ending path that leads away from home and circles back. What a journey Vivian and this necklace have taken, Molly thinks: from a cobblestoned village on the coast of Ireland to a tenement in New York to a train filled with children, steaming westward through farmland, to a lifetime in Minnesota. And now to this moment, nearly a hundred years after it all began, on the porch of an old house in Maine "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

84 " Test your limits. Learn what you can endure. "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

85 " And anyway, how do you talk about losing everything? "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

86 " Despite the landlord’s disapproval, the sweltering heat, the gloomy rooms, and the cacophony of strange noises, so unfamiliar to my country ears, I felt another swell of hope. As I looked around our four rooms, it did seem that we were off to a fresh start, having left behind the many hardships of life in Kinvara: the damp that sank into our bones, the miserable, cramped hut, our father’s drinking—did I mention that?—that threw every small gain into peril. Here, our da had the promise of a job. We could pull a chain for light; the twist of a knob brought running water. Just outside the door, in a dry hallway, a toilet and bathtub. However modest, this was a chance for a new beginning. "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

87 " it?” “Friday, April fourth, ma’am.” She coughs. Then she doubles over and coughs "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

88 " The first twenty-three years of my life are the ones that shaped me, and the fact "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

89 " Vivian has come back to the idea that the people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments. They’re with us in the grocery store, as we turn a corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles. "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

90 " I am the only one of my siblings with red hair. When I asked my da where I got it, he joked that there must’ve been rust in the pipes. His own hair was dark—“cured,” he said, through years of toil—but when he was young it was more like auburn. Nothing like yours, he said. Your hair is as vivid as a Kinvara sunset, autumn leaves, the Koi goldfish in the window of that hotel in Galway. Mr. Grote doesn’t "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

91 " I get the sense that my abandonment, and the circumstances that brought me to them, matter little to them, compared to the need I might fill in their lives. - (Niamh/Dorothy) "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

92 " The reading part of her feels private, between her and the characters in a book. "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

93 " He squints at me. “Except for the red hair and freckles, you look okay. You’ll be fine and dandy sitting at the table with a napkin on your lap. "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

94 " No substitute for the living, perhaps, but I wasn’t given a choice. I could take solace in their presence or I could fall down in a heap, lamenting what I’d lost. The ghosts whispered to me, telling me to go on. "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

95 " Time constricts and flattens, you know. It’s not evenly weighted. Certain moments linger in the mind and others disappear. The first twenty-three years of my life are the ones that shaped me, and the fact that I’ve lived almost seven decades since then is irrelevant. Those years have nothing to do with the questions you ask. "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

96 " We both start laughing - at the absurdity of our shared experience, the relief of recognition. We cling to each other like survivors of a shipwreck, astonished that neither of us drowned. "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

97 " What’s the best thing that happened to you in the past ten years?” I ask. “Seeing you again.” Smiling, I push back against his chest. “Besides that.” “Meeting you the first time. "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

98 " I can’t imagine why you didn’t memorize this route on the "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

99 " Molly is suddenly struck by the fact that Vivian wrote these words on this sheet of paper more than eighty years ago. Upright and do right make all right. "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train

100 " I’m one of few children on the train who can read. Mam taught me all my letters years ago, in Ireland, then taught me how to spell. When we got to New York, she’d make me read to her, anything with words on it—crates and bottles I found in the street. "

― Christina Baker Kline , Orphan Train