Mona Susan Power > Quotes

“She had always been different, even when she tried not to be, unable to curb her curiosity which led her to read a great number of books. Her world was constantly expanding until she could no longer fit herself into the culture that was most important to her.”
― Susan Power, The Grass Dancer

“Because I have willed it. And I am not a fairy tale.”
― Susan Power, The Grass Dancer

“...I learned that we can't heal the story by changing the plot, pretending the awful stuff didn't happen. Tragedy just breaks out somewhere else along the line. The story won't heal until the players do.”
― Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls

“Survival is never a waste... Remember what you told me one time, how you felt your main job some years was to stay alive? Well, you did your job, you made it through. Not everyone does. It takes fortitude.”
― Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls

“You can put ideas on and off just like moccasins. You can wear them and set them aside, hold onto those you find meaningful. Don't be afraid of learning something beyond what we're able to teach you. Even the wisest person doesn't know everything. But it's also important to preserve the ideas that make sense to you, even in the face of resistance--someone telling you that you're wrong and only they know the truth. Such boasting is evidence of a fool, perhaps a dangerous one.”
― Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls

“A permanent dull ache spread from my belly to my chest. I thought I could feel pinpricks of loneliness in the pads of my fingers, taste it in the back of my mouth. Clara Miller must have been lonely too, longing to be touched. One day as she sat before her metal tub filled to the rim with sweet corn, she reached behind her head and unpinned her silver hair. It tumbled down her back like creamy lace cloak. She hiked her skirts to her knees and I could see she had removed her stockings. Her legs were heavy and milk white, solid as columns. She hiked her skirts higher, until they bunched in her lap.

When I kissed the back of her neck she quivered, like the dying peasant I’d shot and killed a week before. Her silver hair smelled like smoke. Clara and I tangled together like the bale of wire resting beside the unrepaired chicken coop. We were shameless, falling to the ground, wading into the creek, making our way to her bed.”
― Susan Power, The Grass Dancer

“We worked well together because I was quiet, fascinated by her stories of Wisconsin, which, as she told it, was not only the center of the universe but the place where all life began.”
― Susan Power, The Grass Dancer

“My father says that we should welcome all stories to see if they are worth remembering. “You can put ideas on and off just like moccasins. You can wear them and set them aside, hold on to those you find meaningful. Don’t be afraid of learning something beyond what we’re able to teach you. Even the wisest person doesn’t know everything. But it’s also important to preserve the ideas that make sense to you, even in the face of resistance—someone telling you that you’re wrong and only they know the truth. Such boasting is evidence of a fool, perhaps a dangerous one.”
― Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls

“You don’t let your feelings run around and jump into someone else’s hand.” Mercury made a fist. “You grab on to your own life and push it around where you want it to go.”

Mercury believed she had her life firmly in place beneath her tongue, and she didn’t spit it out here and there, in bits and pieces diffusing its power. She had even taken a new name, changing it from Anna to Mercury after er granddaughter brought home a copy of the periodic table in the eighth grade and explained it to her: “An element is a substance that can’t be broken down into simpler substances.”

“That’s my story,” Mercury told Charlene. running her thick forefinger across the chart. “I’m all of a piece.”

Charlene opened her mouth to object, to explain that her grandmother could never be one of the chemical elements, assigned an atomic number and measured for atomic weight, but Mercury presided over the kitchen like a force of nature. Charlene’s words were snatched from her mind before they ever made it to her vocal chords. She imagined they were pulled into the woman’s energy field, the electric air surrounding Mercury’s body like her own personal atmosphere.”
― Susan Power, The Grass Dancer

“The point is that even in difficult times, see how the light is always working to come in. Don’t forget to notice.”
― Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls

“But when you harbor an inner script that treats you like the enemy, it doesn't allow you to soar for very long. Doubts nibble at the edges of your thoughts until they're the only voice left. Imposter syndrome secures its triumph and ushers in an era of self-sabotage. Then the carnival shuts down, packs up, moves to another town. And you're alone, hiding in the dark.”
― Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls

“Maybe we should dance and dream and pray for the good of everything in the world because we’re meant to restore it together.”
― Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls

“In two generations of one family, we lost the ability to think in words other English. This loss reshaped our minds. English has its grand beauty . . . but it also has its agenda. Dakota is a missing piece for me in my quest to be whole.”
― Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls

“The dolls have spoken. They tell me they did their best to heal the ones they love. But always they failed because even the medicine of love can't change what is broken. It's up to us to transform the story we're living. Though you have powerful business here. You can make your story whatver you want.”
― Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls: A Novel

“She took to praying to Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit of her childhood, who had not been a jealous God, she thought, but had waited patiently for her to honor Him again.”
― Susan Power, The Grass Dancer

“A vast mirror hung above his desk, its gilt frame a horror of twisted vines and sharp leaves, angry looking foliage. I thought of it as Eden Lost. The first occasion I was alone in the room I stepped to the glass and touched my reflection with a finger. It was the only time I’d seen myself in a mirror, but the glass was so wavy I could have been staring into water. I was struck by how much my mouth tipped downward in a child’s pout, and I hadn’t realized I watched the world through my eyelashes. I didn’t observe myself for very long. My eyes were the same shape as my mother’s, curved like wings; watching them made me lonesome.”
― Susan Power, The Grass Dancer

“I’m your friend now,” she told Harley as she massaged his neck and shoulders. “I have plenty of soul to spare. I’m rubbing it into you right now, can you tell?” She was kneading his lower back with her knuckles, and Harley nodded because the warmth was spreading. Pumpkin was making her way into his heart, lighting the corners of his empty soul with a red-gold flame.

“You won’t be alone now,” Pumpkin crooned. “I’m part of you, like it or not.”

And Harley could sleep. He could close his eyes without spinning away in darkness. He though that sleeping beside Pumpkin must be better than Frank Pike’s crazy sex adventures, but he would keep her a secret. He would keep her locked in that little chamber she’d reached with her fingers through the very walls of his back.”
― Susan Power, The Grass Dancer

“Remember what you told me one time, how you felt your main job some years was to stay alive? Well, you did your job, you made it through. Not everyone does. It takes fortitude.”
― Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls: A Novel

“We are a threat to wašíču designs. For them, there is no such thing as enough.”
― Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls

“They like you to perform because to them, it’s a trick. They think when we learn from them and their books it’s like we’re a puppy you can make bow or dance on its back legs. They look at us like fractions. We’re fractions, not whole as them.”
― Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls

“As I move to help him I glanced back at my boy, the singer of bees, as he sat in a patch of sun. This is a Sacred Being, I thought, in hushed wonder. Tears sprang forward and I blinked them away. I was not proud, you see, or very glad. I was afraid for him from that day on because while this world has a great need of Sacred Beings, we are never ready for them.”
― Susan Power, Sacred Wilderness

“Lake Michigan had tempted her. It was a clear emerald green, and she could see to the bottom. The sand looked soft.”
― Susan Power, The Grass Dancer

“we can’t heal the story by changing the plot, pretending the awful stuff didn’t happen. Tragedy just breaks out somewhere else along the line. The story won’t heal until the players do.”
― Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls

“When Winona whispered her memories to me in later years, she said that Whitestone Hill was the day the world ended. I never asked what she meant, how the world could be gone when the sun was still in the sky and my parents alive. I felt such a question would diminish her pain, which was clear to see from the stain of ancient tears trailing her indigo eyes.”
― Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls

“How when a dream comes true you have to feel deserving or else it brings only guilt and shame.”
― Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls

“Sometimes when you lose a lot you have to put your heart away to keep it ticking.”
― Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls

“When I thought of them together, I saw my sister perched behind Philbert on a bucking Brahma bull. She wasn’t grasping her boyfriend around the waist but kept her seat by clenching her knees. Somewhere in the picture Philbert was tossed to the ground, but Evelyn clung to the animal’s back like a wood tick, dug in, ignoring Philert’s waving arms and shouts for her to let go. The scene was so vivid in my mind I asked Evelyn once if she’d ever ridden a bull.

“I thought about,” she admitted. “But I’m only crazy for a second.”
― Susan Power, The Grass Dancer

“The air she couldn't breathe was scorched, smelled like incense and tobacco, and the atmosphere was charged with an electric buzz of grace which, once you've experienced it, you will never forget.”
― Susan Power, Sacred Wilderness

“Margaret peered at her reflecion, moving the compact in a circle so she could see her entire face. She though she looked transparent as a baby crayfish in the Little Heart River. Maragret had never been a vain woman, one to consult each mirror she passed or smooth her hair as she caught her reflection in a storefront window. She simply wanted to make sure she was still there, still flesh and sweet blood and silver hair. There were days she was so light she couldn’t be sure. She felt herself floating beneath the covers, held down by sweat and three star quilts.”
― Susan Power

“Don’t you know you’re beautiful?” Fanny picked up one of my hands as casually as she would a teacup. “Look at this, look at these delicate bones, nails as glossy as porcelain. I can’t stand it.” She dropped my hand and fell back into her chair in one motion. “I think it’s that curl of a smile that finally does them in—partway between a sneer and a laugh. Makes them work to impress you.”
― Susan Power, The Grass Dancer