Jane Hamilton > Quotes

“She read books quickly and compulsively, paperback after paperback, as if she might drift away without the anchor of the printed page.”
― Jane Hamilton

“It is books that are a key to the wide world; if you can't do anything else, read all that you can.”
― Jane Hamilton

“...you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder, you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help... And then finally, the way through grief is grieving.”
― Jane Hamilton

“I feel like I don't have all the ingredients a person is supposed to have.”
― Jane Hamilton, The Book of Ruth

“I used to think if you fell from grace it was more likely than not the result of one stupendous error, or else an unfortunate accident. I hadn't learned that it can happen so gradually you don't lose your stomach or hurt yourself in the landing. You don't necessarily sense the motion. I've found it takes at least two and generally three things to alter the course of a life: You slip around the truth once, and then again, and one more time, and there you are, feeling, for a moment, that it was sudden, your arrival at the bottom of the heap.”
― Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

“Sometimes I couldn't figure it out, what all the living was for.”
― Jane Hamilton, The Book of Ruth

“We're only passers-by, and all you can do is love what you have in your life. A person has to fight the meanness that sometimes comes with you when you're born, sometimes grows if you aren't in lucky surroundings. It's our challenge to fend it off, leave it behind us choking and gasping for breath in the mud. It's our task to seek out something with truth for us, no matter if there is a hundred-mile obstacle course in the way, or a ramshackle old farmhouse that binds and binds.”
― Jane Hamilton, The Book of Ruth

“We all need people to tell us that we were the ones who had been deeply wronged.”
― Jane Hamilton, The Book of Ruth

“I have since wondered if a person can know how deep a thing goes without getting outside of it, without taking it apart, without, in fact, ruining it.”
― Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

“It was impossible not to admire him, not to want to do something to contain that kind of beauty- drink him, ingest him, sneak into his shirt and hide for the rest of one's natural life.”
― Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

“There were so many miracles at work: that a blossom might become a peach, that a bee could make honey in its thorax, that rain might someday fall. I thought then about the seasons changing, and in the gray of night I could almost will myself to see the azure sky, the gold of the maple leaves, the crimson of the ripe apples, the hoarfrost on the grass.”
― Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

“It must be strange to keep your strong mind in a body that grows older and weaker and no longer resembles your own image of yourself.”
― Jane Hamilton, The Book of Ruth

“I looked up then, out the far window, and there, just within sight, the sun was going down across the river. It was dull red, no longer shining over the land, its ray brought home to roost, contained within its sphere. The sky was streaked with lavendar, a pulsing pale blue, purple and smudged pink and orange melding into one another all the way to the horizon.”
― Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

“I'd forgotten how your blood flows toward a person when they move, so that all at once, you know what the pull of gravity feels like. And you know that this is something strong and important, something that you need for life, this woman moving through the room.”
― Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

“I heard the phrases and I wanted all of me to call out in a song, a song that doesn't have words, a song that almost doesn't have noise. A lot of people take a short cut and call that feeling of song love. They just call it that because there isn't a way to describe it. But the word love doesn't describe the half of it. It doesn't do anything to bring to mind the song we all want so desperately to sing.”
― Jane Hamilton, The Book of Ruth

“I had forgotten what it was like, to be drawn to a person...I'd forgotten how your blood flows toward a person when they move, so that all at once you know what the pull of gravity feels like. and you know that this is something strong and important, something that you need for life, this woman moving through the room. ”
― Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

“In May, when the grass was so green it hurt to look at it, the air so overpoweringly sweet you had to go in and turn on the television just to dull your senses- that's when Claire knew it was time to look for the asparagus in the pastures. If it rained she wondered if she should check our secret places for morels. In June, when the strawberries ripened, we made hay and the girls rode on top of the wagon. I was ever mindful of the boy who had fallen off and broken his neck. In July, the pink raspberries, all in brambles in the woods and growing up our front porch, turned black and tart. In August, the sour apples were the coming thing. In September there were the crippled-up pears in the old orchard. In October, we picked the pumpkin and popcorn. And all winter, when there was snow, we lived for the wild trip down the slopes on the toboggan.”
― Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

“It was about forgiving. I understood that forgiveness itself was strong, durable—like strands of a web weaving around us, holding us.”
― Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

“He wore binoculars around his neck the way librarians wear their glasses.”
― Jane Hamilton

“Wait." Walter went to the basket, taking what was a gray sleeve, drawing it out fro the middle of the heap. "Oh," He said. He held the shapeless wool sweater to his chest. Joyce had knit for months the year Daniel died, and here was the result, her handiwork, the garment that would fit a giant. It was nothing more than twelve skeins of yarn and thousands of loops, but it had the power to bring back in a flash the green-tiled walls of the hospital, the sound of an ambulance trying to cut through city traffic in the distance, the breathing of the dying boy, his father staring at the ceiling, the full greasy bucket of fried chicken on he bed table.
"I'll take this one," Walter said, balling up the sweater as best he could, stuffing it into a shopping bag that was half full of the books he was taking home, that he was borrowing.
"Oh, honey," Joyce said. "You don't want that old scrap."
"You made it. I remember your making it." Keep it light, he said to himself, that's a boy. "There's a use for it. Don't you think so, Aunt Jeannie? No offense, Mom, but I could invade the Huns with it or strap the sleeves to my car tires in a blizzard, for traction, or protect our nation with it out in space, a shield against nuclear attack."
Jeannie tittered in her usual way in spite of herself. "You always did have that sense of humor," she said as she went upstairs. When she was out of range, Joyce went to Walter's bag and retrieved the sweater. She laid it on the card table, the long arms hanging down, and she fingered the stitches. "Will you look at the mass of it," she exclaimed. "I don't even recall making it."
""'Memory -- that strange deceiver,'" Walter quoted.”
― Jane Hamilton, The Short History of a Prince

“In Charles Dickens's books I had to admire the way the meanest enemies spoke to each other, with what seemed to me to be the greatest civility.”
― Jane Hamilton, The Book of Ruth

“I will hear a noise, like a fish jumping, and when I look I'll see Lizzy coming to the surface, shaking off her pink scales, finding her new arms to do the breaststroke to shore.”
― Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

“I have given up on speech with the Rev; there is no use explaining that you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help. My trust, even down in that dark place I carry, is that some person will come running. And then finally the way through grief is grieving.”
― Jane Hamilton, The Book of Ruth

“The harvest was a wild living thing that you were trying to tame while all the while it was dragging you behind, arms out, flailing, in the chase. But here was the miracle: Despite the chaos, the lack of planning, the bad feeling between Sherwood and my father, there was also an overriding unity of purpose, a reverence for the family history, a love for the soil within the property lines.”
― Jane Hamilton, The Excellent Lombards

“She could never be part of so much of his turbulent history, his youthful adventure, where life had been deeply felt.”
― Jane Hamilton

“Emma, Emma, Emma," I said, wishing I could somehow teach her to take the smaller blows of life in her stride.”
― Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World

“There were moments, I could now see, when it was understandable to completely go off your rocker. The easiest and most reasonable and maybe proper thing to do in the world, to lose hold of yourself.”
― Jane Hamilton, The Excellent Lombards

“Miss Finch said she meant to listen to new books as well as her old favorites, even the ones that pierced her heart, before she departed this world.”
― Jane Hamilton, The Book of Ruth

“I knew that we were two humans, that's all, two humans walking around blindly in the night, looking for a warm hand.”
― Jane Hamilton, The Book of Ruth

“...there is no use explaining that you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help. My trust, even down in that dark place I carry, is that some person will come running. And then finally the way through grief is grieving, rolling over so the tears can drip out of your ears and settling in for a long sleep.”
― Jane Hamilton, The Book of Ruth