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41 " The night has made up its mind. It’s we who are too slow, who move in the wake of events already decided for us, who refuse, who are too weak or too simple, or are perhaps, strictly, unable to understand— "
― Amanda Coplin , The Orchardist
42 " What was recognized as success—the applause, the exclamations, the job well done; she was already off the horse, pumping people’s hands in congratulations—did not fill her. Did not even begin to fill her. What she wanted was the despair, or something else that was found there. Something that lived with despair. But the moment she was inside it, she failed to find what it was she wanted so badly. And so she would ride again. "
43 " And that was the point of children, thought Caroline Middey: to bind us to the earth and to the present, to distract us from death. A distraction dressed as a blessing: but dressed so well, and so truly, that it became a blessing. Or maybe it was the other way around: a blessing first, before a distraction. ...But she did not think any more about it because at her back, suddenly, the child woke from her nap, and she rose at once to go to her. (p. 124) "
44 " He did not go after her himself, but those months after he fell out of the tree, though his physical wounds more or less healed—though he walked with a slight limp afterward—a kind of vacancy, a silence, hung around him, like a mantle on his shoulders. "
45 " her cheeks splotched red from the cold, as she "
46 " And the wind was alive the day they put Jane into the ground; it played over the plateau and made the sound of rain in the tree and in the long dry grass. And Talmadge was relieved: for the sound hid them all from each other, and Della in her grief. Her hair blowing over her face as she stood beside the grave, unmoving. "
47 " All we do is the same thing all the time, and nothing changes, and you do it every day…why do we do it? "
48 " in town the next day, and she was prepared to do "
49 " Where some women wanted mere privacy, she yearned for complete solitude that verged on the violent; solitude that forced you constantly back upon yourself, even when you did not want it anymore. But she wanted it nonetheless. "
50 " The sound of people talking was constant, rising and falling, rising and then falling. The girl was heading back to him, out of the greater darkness, the horse's movement making no sound. A gentle wind, a kind of sighing, moved over the earth; and for a moment he felt as if his body had evaporated. "
51 " And how does one so small and perfect in her way become an adult? The change would never occur if he kept his eye on her; because how could change happen so quickly? There was only one answer: it could not. But then she had changed so much already— "
52 " Up the Columbia, the water splashing steadily against the hull; past Orondo and Entiat, the orchards along the benches materializing in the dawn. "
53 " He considered those times in life when he had uttered words to a person—Caroline Middey or Clee, or his mother, or a stranger who had long forgotten him—he wished he had never uttered, or had uttered differently, or he thought of the times he remained silent when he should have spoken as little as a single word. "
54 " The forest would absorb her, she thought, it would keep her until the future showed itself. "
55 " knickknacks, in the shed. Things he had picked up over a lifetime of "
56 " He was to speak of her less often in the years to come... It made Angeline more resentful of the one who stayed away. "
57 " hear from him for a while. But then he comes to "