Ann Howard Creel > Quotes

“Memories are fragile things to hold, but many times, it's what we have.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days

“I’ve often wondered, even to this day, why during painful times some people seem to step away from themselves and make decisions that fall far out of their usual line of character and behaviour. Perhaps a natural reluctance to sit still is central, or perhaps, like the lesser animals, instinct forces us to go on even if grief has left us not up to the task…. In one fleeting moment, I stripped away the petals of my future, let them catch wind, and fly away”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days

“He touched me as if I were the curved and delicate handle of a china cup, but he held me tightly just as I was, flesh and blood and full of human flaws and fears. In his arms I wasn't a girl dreaming of sailing the high seas, and I wasn't a farm kid jumping the train, either, but a fully grown woman riding the soft side of a crescent moon.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days

“Sometimes you do find what you're looking for closer than you think”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days

“Livy: Don’t you ever wonder what else is out there…beyond the farm?

Ray: Sometimes

Livy: Aren’t you curious how other people lived?

Ray: I enjoyed the drive, but i like coming back to my place. Sleeping on my land.

Livy: Your land. Ha! Seems every war in human history is about owning a land. I liked the Indian view that we’re just temporary guardians of the land where we lived.

Ray: It’s not temporary to me.

Livy: But your family just owned this land for less than a hundred years. In a span of a history that’s nothing.

Ray: In a span of a life…that’s near everything.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days

“In the past, I would’ve listed things such as common interests, mutual attraction, worldliness, and higher education. My freedom above all else. If I had found love, it would have had to be the kind that overwhelmed and overpowered all else.

I passed a hand between Ray and Me. “Once you told me that this,” I said “is a beginning.” I searched his face. "But how do you know, Ray? How do you know it’s the beginning of something good?”

“I know.” His breath was warm on my face as he moved in closer.” Because someday, you’re bound to forgive yourself.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days

“As a child, when I first heard the story of Creation, I’d closed my eyes and pictured the earth as a ball rolling off the palm of God and into dark space, then drifting around until it found its home in sunny orbit. Never perfect, but ever spinning, and holding on to her course, despite it all.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days

“Words of kindness had always been more difficult for me to handle than harsh reprimands. Ever since I had been quite young, I could resist those who went against me, had been able to deny their opinions. My inner strength came from an ability to handle, then separate myself from, adversity. Compassion, however, brought up more raw emotion than judgments could ever stir.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days

“We’d save up a penny or two, bring them down here, and set them on the tracks. When a train comes, it flattens out that penny, leaving it thin as paper and shaped long, like an egg. But it happens so fast, you can’t see where the train sends that penny flying… We’d look all around, in the sage brush and the prickly pear cactus, until we found them.. And you know what?”

He stopped walking and turned to gaze at me now. “We always found them closer than we thought.”

“After we’d looked all over Creation, we’d find them somewhere near the tracks, after all.”

He said, “Sometimes you do find what you’re looking for closer than you think.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days

“All over the world, people are looking at the same stars, the same moon, the same sun, every day. Somehow, I didn't feel so isolated when I thought of it that way.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days

“makes us no promises, no guarantees. Things move toward us whether we want them or not. Accidents occur, illnesses strike, and bombs fall. One street can be pulverized, the next one over not even scratched. Chance is so shifty and arbitrary.”
― Ann Howard Creel, While You Were Mine

“My aunts were not cruel, you understand. They loved to talk, and at every available opportunity they gave away the neatly wrapped presents of their thoughts, confident that no one would refuse them. ”
― Ann Howard Creel

“Silver liked people to a point; he liked to hear them tell of some important news or share a laugh, but then solitude was always calling him back. Too much contact with people took things away from him—his energy, his soul, his freedom.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Whiskey Sea

“Rose spoke up softly beside me. 'It's how you handle the unfairness of life -that's what matters, I think.'...In this city of imprisonment, I had seen faith and optimism, strength and fortitude in the face of adversity.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days

“When I'd headed out here on my wedding day, I hadn't realized I'd bought a ticket to my own history, a different one from studying Akh-en-aten and Horizon-of-the-Aten, maybe, but a living, ongoing one.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days

“Loving him was perhaps like peering into the rain—a sort of sightlessness, akin to stumbling about in a storm, grabbing the things you want to find, and letting the others wash away.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Whiskey Sea

“she had wanted love. She had thought love would save her. She had hoped she would be worthy. She had dreamed of redemption. And for a time she believed she had found it all.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Whiskey Sea

“The sea was a landscape of longing, she thought, a landscape of ceaseless change.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Whiskey Sea

“She also knew that the story you made up in your mind was rarely the real story.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Whiskey Sea

“You hungry?” asked Silver, who was thus nicknamed because his hair had turned old when he was but twenty-five.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Whiskey Sea

“A classroom of students may read the same piece of poetry or the same passage in a novel, and each person may interpret it differently.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days

“Why must you say such eccentric things?” “Maybe I’m eccentric.” “It’s not something most people aspire to.” “I’m not most people.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The River Widow

“Could such happiness come out of the unexpected? Or was unexpected happiness the best happiness of all?”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Whiskey Sea

“At the university the professors who genuinely loved their subjects were always the most interesting teachers. Enthusiasm for a topic made it enticing to others.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days

“Now I could see it. Despite the poise, I could see the suffering in their eyes. I tried to think of something to say, but what? The leaders of our country had determined that Japanese American presence in the coastal states posed a threat to national security. Loyalty had been questioned, and with so many lives and secrets at stake, perhaps most people felt that Congress had made a prudent decision. But I had begun to think they had reacted hastily and irresponsibly toward good citizens. After all, except for the American Indians, we were all immigrants or descendants of immigrants.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days

“whose duty it was to lead the souls of dead women to paradise.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days

“If my father hadn’t come to America about 35 years ago, I’d be starving in Poland . . .   I’d be sobbing in France . . .   I’d be stealing in Greece . . .   I’d be shivering in Belgrade . . .   I’d be slaving in Frankfurt . . .   I’d be hiding in Prague . . .   I’d be buried in Russia.   But here he was, alive and walking on his own two feet.”
― Ann Howard Creel, While You Were Mine

“Did love always come joined with a certain amount of trepidation? Along with the good feelings, was there always dread that something wouldn’t go right or that love could be lost? Love and fear seemed twined like stalks of a grapevine—so close they couldn’t be separated.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The River Widow

“At that moment, I wished with everything in my body that things could be different. I wished I could pluck out the threads of him that I didn't care for and keep the ones I liked. But then again, I knew that people couldn't be pulled apart in that way. Those severed threads would just cause the whole of him to unravel.”
― Ann Howard Creel

“I tried to remember the first time I had heard of Congress’s plans for Japanese American internment. I recalled that my first impression had been one of approval, that certainly we couldn’t chance domestic disloyalty in the face of this terrible world war. But now, as I sat beside Rose and Lorelei and gazed out at this barn—this farm camp, as they called it—I wavered. Certainly these two girls posed no threat to our country. In fact, all the farmworkers seemed to be the most peaceful of people. They had volunteered to help with the harvest, tough physical labor at best, to leave the camp and stay here in conditions little better than those provided for our livestock, all to earn a measly nineteen dollars a month. This was temporary, I kept telling myself. At war’s end, they could return to the homes, businesses, and places in society where they had lived before. I found myself wishing I’d never seen this camp. Perhaps someday, we could all make it back to the places where we started. I didn’t believe it, but I tried to.”
― Ann Howard Creel, The Magic of Ordinary Days