Nathan Harris > Quotes

“Maybe with time there were parts of the past that could be forgotten, their sway over him toppled, but there would always be certain memories that survived the fall and stood amid the rubble. Monuments of loss.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“I can carry him, I've carried him my whole life.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“And alongside this decision there was some forfeiture in the thought he found unsettling: that for every pound of weight they’d carried across their backs, for every drop of sweat that had poured off, no inch of this land was theirs. As long as they stayed, they were no better than the others, kept on the borders of town, hidden among the trees just like their brothers and sisters. And it grew clear that the only path to a life worth living would be found elsewhere, where they might not have more but could not possibly have less.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“You know,” George said, “when I look in the mirror in the morning I see a miserable old bastard looking back at me. Yet when I see you, I take great comfort, knowing how much progress I have left to make on that same path.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“Her beauty was secondary to the strength of her character, the fortitude in which she housed her beliefs,”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“to explain a world of cruelty that had also carried in it the great joy of watching his mother at the mercy of Little James’s fiddle on a Sunday afternoon, the miracle of a fresh tick mattress, the sweetness of water after a day spent picking in the fields?”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“she lived knowing, quite well, that such things were not promised to her. She might hope for more but had long ago learned to live with whatever came to pass. Yet sometimes—just sometimes—hope was enough.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“Society made exceptions in matters of great beauty.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“Early on, this inactivity was a pulsing shame. She sensed her old self, the dutiful and productive self, knocking at her conscience, begging to be let back into her life. But this feeling passed, and what took its place was something akin to bliss.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“After that she’d had to face life by herself, to brave it anew each morning upon waking, and to continue without knowing where the journey might lead her, if anywhere at all.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“Many a thinker had devoted himself to questions of aging and death, yet the thinkers died at the same rate as the idiots, and”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“Clementine looked at Prentiss a final time, not in shame but as if to say, "This is what I will do for you.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“Don't hide this pain either, I want you to carry what you've done.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“She thought of Caleb—the cruelty of his absence. How on days like this in his boyhood, rife with silence, they had once huddled together on the couch, suspending all else in store for the day in favor of each other’s company. Before long coffee would be brewed, and the house would find heat as though created purely by the words they shared, the laughter between them, and the day would draw to a close without either noticing.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“that all danger carried the faint trace of comfort, all wrongs the hint of what may be right. How else to explain a world of cruelty that had also carried in it the great joy of watching his mother at the mercy of Little James’s fiddle on a Sunday afternoon, the miracle of a fresh tick mattress, the sweetness of water after a day spent picking”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“When they hugged, when he held the shape of her against him, he felt like a boy again, and wished he could draw upon that feeling on command for the rest of his time alive.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“The present thunders on while the past is a wound untended, unstitched, felt but never healed.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“that all danger carried the faint trace of comfort, all wrongs the hint of what may be right. How else to explain a world of cruelty that had also carried in it the great joy of watching his mother at the mercy of Little James’s fiddle on a Sunday afternoon, the miracle of a fresh tick mattress, the sweetness of water after a day spent picking in the fields?”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“feeling passed, and what took its place was something akin to bliss. Sitting on the porch with Mildred was not a respite from another task but a way to spend the day. Cleaning the kitchen could wait until tomorrow; dusting George’s study could wait a lifetime. There were stretches where she did not even bathe. A life without motion, without expectations—it was the secret she kept from the outside world, for no one else comprehended the great joy in abandonment, in giving up and starting over with a blank page, a page that might never be filled.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“It’s rare for your father to find fellow travelers. Those two boys are outsiders. They understand him. And he them.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“Lee had surrendered only a week earlier, and the timing could not have been worse for a celebration; and yet if the hens were skilled at anything it was turning a blind eye to reality,”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“He could think only of the rituals. Not his own people’s, but those he’d heard of on other plantations. Men and women gathering when certain stars aligned and heating clay, smearing themselves whole, dancing naked, first in unison but then alone, twirling endlessly, as though if they twirled fast enough they might spin themselves right into the ground and return to the earth.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“You claim you itching to get started, Mr. Walker, but from what I seen I’d hazard you ain’t worked a day in your life.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“So much of their lives had been pressed upon them by other men, it felt only right that each decision be prized—their own to make.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“who would rather leave a moment naked than tar it with wasted words.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“You are barely grown,” George told him. “If you only knew the many wrongs awaiting you.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“Such comments had once harmed her grievously, yet she’d developed a resistance to such attacks; from the stares in town and the words uttered behind her back. A hollow pit, somewhere within her, where she stored such viciousness away, let it die, then released it to the air to float off forever. She sensed it, somewhere beside her heart, a compartment at her core—her hand felt the spot, let it rest for a moment, before her anger settled and she closed the door to the cruelty of his words. “I”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“a place that was equal parts destination and idea. Elsewhere was the only name it carried. The barn beside George’s cabin was elsewhere; a patch of free ground up north was elsewhere; his mother was elsewhere; salvation was elsewhere; all those lives that passed outside the jail existed elsewhere (praise be to their good fortune); and a fate, any fate, other than the one that lay before him would be a perfectly fine road to elsewhere. The map, with all its many variations, was in his head, yet he knew quite well he would never make the journey.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“He’d missed her as the other soldiers missed their mothers, knowing that his home was not so much the cabin but the place where she existed, waiting for him to return, waiting to embrace him.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water

“The roads were still a slough, and he trod the soft mud as if it were quicksand pulling him under—yet the foliage was bold enough to pass for art, and the woods exuded the pleasant smell of wet leaves, such that the entire walk felt so refreshing he would’ve considered his arrival in town enough activity to turn around and go home if he’d had no obligations to attend to.”
― Nathan Harris, The Sweetness of Water