Patsy

“Grief takes about a year,” Mrs. Kelly once told a young mother who had lost her son. “You have to get through each holiday, each new season. You will cry at Christmas and New Year’s and Mother’s Day and Thanksgiving. You will suffer with the first daffodil, the first falling red leaves, the first snow . . . Each occasion, each new season will rip your heart out; then, when there’s nothing left, you’ll get better.” She was right, and she knew from experience.”
― Patricia Harman, The Midwife of Hope River

“We think our problems are so big, but the universe is so much bigger and everyone on this planet has problems; it’s part of being alive.”
― Patricia Harman, The Reluctant Midwife

“Most of my life I’ve felt was dreaming. Now and then I wake up, sometimes for months, sometimes for minutes. Tonight I’m awake, and I lie thinking about the recent events and the people whose lives have crossed mine like veins in an old woman’s hands. Their faces float past…the twisted and the lame...the strong…the loving…for we are all twisted and lame, strong and loving.”
― Patricia Harman, The Midwife of Hope River

“I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to give pleasure or it is worth nothing.”
― Stephen Greenblatt