Kay Chronister > Quotes

“Always they had been portioning out fragments of the bog’s life in exchange for fragments of their own.”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“My children, this place will not survive not changing. You will not survive it.”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“You will not live without changing, her mother had said. But what could they possibly change into? The question was too horrifying to consider.”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“There was no freedom in recognizing the lie at the foundation of everything.”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“She felt the disorienting but familiar beginnings of the realization that she was unprepared to do something that was simple and obvious for everyone else, so obvious that no one would imagine they needed to explain it, so obvious that she would not be able to disguise what she didn't know once she started.”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“From above came a wounded architectural groan.”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“it was because he wanted to hold me still until he could stop this place from changing. Because he thought that would stop me from changing too.”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“she could not and did not try to square her certainty that she no longer wanted to be married to him with her desperate, frantic hope that he had called to say that he still wanted to be married to her.”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“You are not responsible for them,”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“One time Nora and Wenna followed her from a distance. What does she want? Nora kept asking. What does she want? Really asking, What does she want that isn’t here, that isn’t us?”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“this place will not survive not changing. You will not survive it.”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“about her appeared less human than the rest of them.”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“because knowing what had happened that night would mean knowing what had been happening to their mother for the whole twenty-four years that she had been their mother,”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“You have to make new compacts. The old ones will not sustain you here anymore.”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“Someone rose every few hours to prod the flames back to life or add another brick of peat, the fire-crackling and the rich scent of burning earth stirring everyone else into a half-lucid, liquid state, only awake enough to appreciate the pleasure of not waking up.”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“The quiet in the room felt to Nora like a precarious kind of quiet that might at any second be shattered by an outburst of unbearable emotion and violence.”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“Everyone loved something more than they loved her.”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“Even when dressed, her mother was somehow more naked than anyone should ever be, her insides out, the pulpy heart of what she really was still visible even though Eda could not have said exactly what”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“Despising himself for being arrogant and desire-blind enough to think he had been in love when he had only ever been an unwanted younger son gnashing his teeth and demanding sustenance.”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife

“they had all concluded that what had been wrong with their mother had been something internal to her and not something inflicted upon her by anyone else. How could any of them bear to live with their father, otherwise?”
― Kay Chronister, The Bog Wife