Anna

“I've tried in this telling, time and time again, to pinpoint the moment where everything starts to fall apart. Everything, meaning me. But there's also the opposite, where some little nut cracks open inside you and a tree starts to grow. Even harder to nail. Because that thing's going to be growing a long time before you notice. Years maybe. then one day you say, Huh, that little crack between my ears has turned into this whole damn tree of wonderful. 515”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

“home, it’s different. I mean yes, you want money and a job, but there’s a hundred other things you do for getting by, especially older people and farmers with the crops, tomato gardens and such. Hunting and fishing, plus all the woman things, making quilts and clothes. Whether big or small, you’ve always got the place you’re living on. I’ve known people to raise a beef in the yard behind their rented trailer. I was getting the picture now on why June’s doom castle had freaked me out. Having some ground to stand on, that’s our whole basis. It’s the bags of summer squash and shelly beans everybody gives you from their gardens, and on from there. The porch rockers where the mammaws get together and knit baby clothes for the pregnant high school girls. Sandwiches the church ladies pack for the hungrier kids to take home on weekends.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

“What’s an oxy, I’d asked. That November it was still a shiny new thing. OxyContin, God’s gift for the laid-off deep-hole man with his back and neck bones grinding like bags of gravel. For the bent-over lady pulling double shifts at Dollar General with her shot knees and ADHD grandkids to raise by herself. For every football player with some of this or that torn up, and the whole world riding on his getting back in the game. This was our deliverance. The tree was shaken and yes, we did eat of the apple.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead