Clare Beams > Quotes

“He was a physician, only an amateur naturalist, but the sort of man who never considered himself an amateur at anything. They all were.”
― Clare Beams, The Illness Lesson

“I think it's especially important to believe in good developments and cling to them. Those kinds of slow daily miracles-like healing, like spring-you know.”
― Clare Beams, The Illness Lesson

“Good as new. As if the only way to be good were to be new, despite all the same flesh, bones, loves, will you had ever had. As if to be healthy meant having no history.”
― Clare Beams, The Illness Lesson

“She had known, as people rarely have to know, what she could sustain. The knowledge might change the way a person walked and spoke and wore her own face.”
― Clare Beams, The Illness Lesson

“What is it? What’s wrong with us?” said Julia. “The place to begin is often to ask if you yourselves have any theories. It can be quite useful, quite enlightening, to hear them in cases such as these. What do you suspect is making you ill, girls?” “Are we expected to know?” Eliza said. In spite of herself a tremendous pride in Eliza was rising in Caroline.”
― Clare Beams, The Illness Lesson

“You think being unhappy has particular choreography?”
― Clare Beams, The Illness Lesson

“Stop, stop, there’s no helping it, I’m something else now.)”
― Clare Beams, The Garden