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What We Keep QUOTES

What We Keep QUOTES

1 " I am thinking about the way that life can be so slippery; the way that a twelve-year-old girl looking into the mirror to count freckles reaches out toward herself and that reflection has turned into that of a woman on her wedding day, righting her veil. And how, when that bride blinks, she reopens her eyes to see a frazzled young mother trying to get lipstick on straight for the parent/teacher conference that starts in three minutes. And how after that young woman bends down to retrieve the wild-haired doll her daughter has left on the bathroom floor, she rises up to a forty-seven-year-old, looking into the mirror to count age spots. "

― Elizabeth Berg , What We Keep

2 " I was downstairs, reading."
" Now?" I strained to see her face. She was smiling, it appeared.
"Yes, now," she said. "It's nice, sometimes, to read in the middle of the night. The sky is so dark and soft-looking outside the window, all the stars out. You have just on light on, you know, and it seems to pour onto the page. Makes the book seem better. You are this little island, just up alone with a book. And you heard the night sounds of the house...It's so interesting to me, that sound. Time. The measure of it. "

― Elizabeth Berg , What We Keep

3 " It's funny how, oftentimes, the people you love the most are given the least margin for error. "

― Elizabeth Berg , What We Keep

4 " Instinctively, the spider spins the web; just as automatically, the human shields the heart. "

― Elizabeth Berg , What We Keep

5 " Well, I was just going to say that it seems one of the things you have to do in order to finally grow up is to let that what-my-parents-did-to-me stuff go. "

― Elizabeth Berg , What We Keep

6 " I am dying of a multitude of feelings, "

― Elizabeth Berg , What We Keep

7 " In a way, it is as if your refusal to forgive is too much a part of you for you to lose it. Who would you be without it? Not yourself. "

― Elizabeth Berg , What We Keep