Keri Smith

“Dodge looked up and saw me in the window, then lay down in front of the door. Protecting me, I realized.


After that, I started watching Dodge all the time. I saw the way he knew by scent alone when Colette's bread was done cooking, or a squirrel was a hundred feet away, or the wind had changed direction. Before he even saw them, he recognized each of the five fishermen who kept their boats in the cove. Most he would go greet, tail wagging, but one he stayed away from.
Over the following days, Dodge became my translator of the world outside the house. Through his nose it became safer, and soon I found myself wanting to inhale the air around me as he did, as something pure and alive and full of messages.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“This wasn’t my first time trying to prepare a meal while dodging the fangs of a dead child who wished me bodily harm.”
― Carissa Orlando, The September House

“But then everybody says that, though you have a brain like a peahen, you're the soul of kindness and generosity.'
Well, I was handicapped here by the fact that, never having met a peahen, I was unable to estimate the quality of these fowls' intelligence, but she had spoken as if they were a bit short of the grey matter, and I was about the ask her who the hell she meant by 'everybody', when she resumed.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit

“When Nola was young, her mother used to tell her that books were like a giant neighborhood where every family was different, and every door was open.”
― Erica Bauermeister, No Two Persons