Kathy Hepinstall > Quotes

“Her childhood had been magical, hours spent in ecstatic loneliness in the apple orchard, dreaming of foreign lands and wild adventures. Everything was new, down to bird song and grass blades. By the time she had reached adulthood, the town around her was like a grandmother who had used up all her stories and now simply rocked on the porch. The same flowers, the same streets, year after year. She longed for someone more exotic. A prince. A pirate.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, Blue Asylum

“Those who wake at this hour feel a lonely separation from everyone but night birds and ghost crabs, never imagining the legion of kindred souls scattered in the darkness, who stare at ceilings and pace floors and look out windows and covet and worry and mourn.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, Blue Asylum

“Jesus isn't gonna help me with a teenager, Lisa. He was good with lepers and whores and blind people, but he can't cure the smart ass years and you know it.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, The Book of Polly

“That's what war was. A great motion and then a great stillness in which the winner crouches and the loser lies facing the sky.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, Blue Asylum

“All men have a little badness in them,' she whispered.
Milo looked at her. 'Sometimes, honey... a woman can be just as evil as a man.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, The House of Gentle Men

“Easy for you to say," Polly said. "You've lived here all your life and stayed under the radar. No one points at you."
"Sometimes small children point at my butt," Aunt Rhea said. "But that's just on account of all the fried chicken.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, The Book of Polly

“They had engaged in what could not be called treatment or even discussion, but open combat, the two of them a microcosm of the great war raging in the far distance: one side that desired autonomy, and the other that took independence as a sign of madness.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, Blue Asylum

“It's not my fault that the gray of everyone else's stories makes the color stand out.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, The Book of Polly

“I wanted someone above me in the chain of life. I didn't want to be alone, a single blue egg in a crumbling nest.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, The Book of Polly

“You should have tried the eggplant parmesan she tried to hoist on me at the church bake sale. No wonder her children turned to Satan. He probably showed up as an angel of light and promised them a decent meal.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, The Book of Polly

“Instead he felt only love. And that was the miracle. The surge in hatred since the war began had created more love around it. It was indomitable, mad, and everlasting, scattered through the rich and the poor, deep and calm in the Quakers, hot and fierce in the mothers, faithful in the warriors, wistful in the pets, seeping its way into mercy and atrocity, destroying things, rebuilding them.”
― Kathy Hepinstall

“Don't question love, Iris. It may come to you in an inconvenient form, one that society finds scandalous, but its a gift from God. A reminder that this institution can't interfere with natural processes, like laughter, prayer, a dream that comes to you in sleep. Or love. Do with it what you want, but know that it means God still sees you not as a lunatic but as His child.”
― Kathy Hepinstall

“You [Polly] and your neighbor Mr. Tornello hate each other. You once paid a little girl to knock on his door and ask to borrow a cup of dumbass.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, The Book of Polly

“I see the way you look at him, and he looks at you. Don't question love, Iris. It may have come to you in an inconvenient form, one that society finds scandalous, but it's a gift from God. A reminder that this institution can't interfere with natural processes, like laughter, prayer, a dream that comes to you in sleep. Or love. Do with it what you want, but know it means God still sees you not as a lunatic but as His child.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, Blue Asylum

“Ironic, isn't it?"
"What?"
"Here I am, trying to survive WITH you, when before my whole plan was just trying to SURVIVE YOU."
"I'm not sure what that means. And I wish you'd stop talking in puzzles and just say normal things, because I've had a big shock. This morning I was looking at a YouTube video of a hamster eating a tiny burrito and now I'm floating on this stupid raft and my friends are dead so just keep that in mind.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, The Lifeboat Clique

“Grief, he thought, would have an ending, but it was a black cat that ran across life, through good conversations and orange firelight and endless drills. It sat on his shoulders and made his knees creek when he stood up. It balanced in the crook of his arm as he cleaned his rifle. And he could not banish it; it was loyal as a dog.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, Sisters of Shiloh

“The soul is nothing but the innards of the finest watch, ruined before the watchmaker’s hands even touch it, by its exposure to air.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, Blue Asylum

“The world was cruel and sudden. This he knew for sure. Relax for a moment, breathe in the scent of a rose, rest in the shade, pet a dog, take a sip of lemonade, fall in love with a dreamy-eyed girl or a haunted faced man, and you are just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Buzzing around the lemonade, you'll find flies. Follow the flies and you'll find death.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, Blue Asylum

“Scandal was an antihistamine.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, The Book of Polly

“Our high school suffered a huge loss of life. But as awful as the tsunami was, good things actually came of it. We learned that out there on the ocean, there’s no such thing as popular kids and unpopular kids. We were all equal and all valuable.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, The Lifeboat Clique

“Do you own a garden?” Before she could respond, Polly answered for her. “Of course not. If you did, you would know that squirrels and other varmints are the enemy. They strip my peach trees and tear up my greens and steal my pecans. And just the other day I caught a squirrel dragging his butt between my cucumbers and sugar peas like a dog. That was pure spite.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, The Book of Polly

“They were sisters, the pretty one and the one who lived in her shadow, a pale, chip-toothed, uncertain girl who made too much noise while eating celery.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, Sisters of Shiloh

“She loved him that much, in a way that made no space for herself, as though he were a full glass of tea and she was the piece of ice that would cause an overspill onto the tablecloth.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, Sisters of Shiloh

“He stood there , mouth agape, the ax hanging useless by his side. This could not be. Pride. Joy. Anticipation.
The chef had perfectly seasoned himself for dinner that night and he would not be denied.
Unquote ( but he would be denied )”
― Kathy Hepinstall, Blue Asylum

“Hayley was being nice. And had made a successful metaphor.

Death was surely near.”
― Kathy Hepinstall

“On the one side was Darcie Burrell—a reed-thin woman with a permanently conflicted expression, as though, deep inside her, someone was trying to bathe a cat. She attended our church, and was famous for praying over people who later”
― Kathy Hepinstall, The Book of Polly

“The world was cruel and sudden. This he knew for sure. Relax for a moment, breathe in the scent of a rose, rest in the shade, pet a dog, take a sip of lemonade, fall in love with a dreamy-eyed girl or a haunted-faced man, and you are just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Buzzing around the lemonade, you’ll find flies. Follow the flies and you’ll find death.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, Blue Asylum

“The better the child, the worse the teenager,”
― Kathy Hepinstall, The Book of Polly

“You are chicken for sure. Got a whole yellow trickle moving the wrong direction down these parts, and a trickle of black folks going the other way. Black and yellow, like a bumblebee.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, Sisters of Shiloh

“HE MISSED THE WOMAN, missed her more than blue could cover.”
― Kathy Hepinstall, Blue Asylum