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41 " years later, she wondered if that was the point, if sometimes the glory was in rebuilding the broken thing, not the result but the process of trying. The "
― Brit Bennett , The Mothers
42 " But Aubrey didn't look scared. She seemed comfortable in her big sweater, a hand resting on her stomach, as if to remind herself that it was still there. She wanted this baby and that was the difference: magic you wanted was a miracle, magic you didn't want was a haunting. "
43 " ...sometimes the glory was in rebuilding the broken thing, not the result but the process of trying. "
44 " Maybe you didn't know who you would be in the world. Maybe you were a different person everywhere you lived. "
45 " Would they ever spend time like that together again? Could you be nostalgic for a friendship that wasn’t over yet or did the fact that you were nostalgic mean that it already was? "
46 " We tried to love the world. We cleaned after this world, scrubbed its hospital floors and ironed its shirts, sweated in its kitchens and spooned school lunches, cared for its sick and nursed its babies. But the world didn't want us, so we left and gave our love to Upper Room. Now we're afraid of this world. A boy snatched Hattie's purse one night and now none of us go out after dark. We hardly go anywhere at all, besides Upper Room. We've seen what this world has to offer. We're scared of what it wants. "
47 " An inside hurt was supposed to stay inside. How strange it must be to hurt in a way that you couldn't hide. "
48 " She licked cinnamon sugar off her fingers, sun-heavy and happy, the type of happiness that before might have felt ordinary, but now seemed fragile, like if she stood too quickly, it might slide off her shoulders and break. "
49 " We don't think of ourselves as "prayer warriors." A man must've come up with that term - men think anything difficult is war. But prayer is more delicate than battle, especially intercessory prayer. More than just a notion, taking up the burdens of someone else, often someone you don't even know. You close your eyes and listen to a request. Then you have to slip inside their body. You are Tracy Robinson, burning for whiskey. You are Cindy Harris's husband, searching your wife's phone. You are Earl Vernon, washing dirty knots out of your strung-out daughter's hair. If you don't become them, even for a second, a prayer is nothing but words. "
50 " Only two reasons a woman might have someone’s husband’s watch: She’s sleeping with him. She repairs watches. "
51 " We tried to love the world. We cleaned after this world, scrubbed its hospital floors and ironed its shirts, sweated in its kitchens and spooned school lunches, cared for its sick and nursed its babies. But the world didn't want us. "
52 " A soft death can be swallowed with Called home to be with the Lord or We’ll see her again in glory, but hard deaths get caught in the teeth like gristle. We "
53 " Could you be nostalgic for a friendship that wasn’t over yet or did the fact that you were nostalgic mean that it already was? "
54 " She was the type of girl who never wanted to admit that she was in pain, as if not confessing it made her stronger. "
55 " Maybe abortion seemed different when it was just an interesting topic to write a paper about or debate over drinks, when you never imagined it might affect you. "
56 " She may hear this story, someday, and wonder what it has to do with her. A girl hiding her scared in her prettiness, an unwanted baby, a dead mother. These are not her heartbreaks. Every heart is fractured differently and she knows the pattern of her cracks, she traces them like lines across her palm. She has a living mother and besides, she was always wanted. Prayed for, even. Now she's grown, or at least she thinks she is. But she hasn't yet learned from the mathematics of grief. The weight of what has been lost is always heavier than what remains. She's heard her granddaddy preach about the good shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine behind in search of the one lost sheep.But what about the flock he abandons? she wonders. Aren't they lost now too? "
57 " She had always seemed a little strange to us anyway - dreamy, like her mind was a balloon on a long string and she forgot to reel it in. "
58 " We would've told her that all together, we got centuries on her. If we laid out all lives toes to heel, we were born before the Depression, the Civil War, even America itself. In all that living, we have known men. Oh girl, we have known littlebit love. The littlebit of honey left in an empty jar that traps the sweetness in your mouth long enough to mask your hunger. We have run tongues over teeth to savor that last littlebit as long as we could, and in all our living, nothing has starved us more. "
59 " Now they were slow and deliberate, the way hurt people loved, stretching carefully just to see how far their damaged muscles could go. "
60 " You didn’t know how desperate you could be until you were. "