Ellen Airgood > Quotes

“It was more that he did better being busy, keeping to a routine. It helped hold the black dogs of thought at bay. Also he had learned that a person could be happy with having done the best they could under the circumstances. It didn't always have to be bright and shiny and impressive to the outside observer.”
― Ellen Airgood, South of Superior

“The basket would never make her famous or end up in a museum. The best part of it was the making of it, sitting at the table weaving while outside the lake crashed into shore and the seagulls roosted somewhere for the night and two women stopped for a moment to watch.”
― Ellen Airgood, South of Superior

“You know, people thought it was so sad that I gave up so much to take care of Emmy, but it wasn't sad. It was love, it was life.”
― Ellen Airgood

“You've given her a new lease on life.'
'She didn't need one. She owns life.”
― Ellen Airgood

“Apartments in Crosscut weren't just depressing. They were wrist-slittingly bleak, and not quite as cheap as Madeline had imagined.”
― Ellen Airgood

“Looking out toward the open water she thought they could have floated in time, landed anywhere in the last thousand years.”
― Ellen Airgood

“She stroked one of the geranium's petals, inhaling its particular bitter fragrance, which she admired for its bold air of unapology.”
― Ellen Airgood

“It was all mixed up, beautiful and bleak, both.”
― Ellen Airgood, South of Superior

“She hunkered down, stared across the horizon. Felt the vast cold world spread out all around her and was reassured by the impersonality of it. This land--wild and serene, huge, ruthless and gentle by turns, was always unconcerned with her, small Madeline who was a tiny dot on it's landscape for a moment in time.”
― Ellen Airgood

“The Fourth was perfect. She'd make a ceremony, an event, of this. She had a bad habit of never giving ceremony its due. But sometimes life demanded ceremony. Sometimes you owed that to yourself.”
― Ellen Airgood

“She walked, and with each step she let another inch of the long furl of her expectations go. The place itself was like a steady hand, a low voice, a very old person who'd seen too much to get overexcited anymore. Stop now a minute, it said. Stop searching.”
― Ellen Airgood

“It appeared that a great part of victory--or at least survival--was simply a dogged hanging on.”
― Ellen Airgood

“chickens better as artwork than in person) and to my sister. The character of Grammy was born one day when Mariann told me, “Crying don’t get the oil changed.” Indeed it does not. My husband, Eric, for reading this book so carefully.”
― Ellen Airgood, Prairie Evers

“Madeline knew how that was. So many people had ideas of what you should and shouldn't do, but in the end you had to decide for yourself.”
― Ellen Airgood