Eileen Prescott

“They would have a ceremony of the lost for her, she thought distantly. The sisters would be comforted by the others, and the party would last until dawn as they all demonstrated their solidarity in the face of grievous loss. In the light of the rising sun, the remaining sisters would join hands, forming a circle, and after that she would cease to exist for them. No longer would she torment them with her new strangeness, her apartness. No one had the right to bring unhappiness to the brothers or sisters, she thought. No one had the right to exist if such existence was a threat to the family--that was the law.”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

“They don't like the way the pictures make them feel. They think it's dangerous. Miriam thinks so. The others will too.'
Ben looked at the tiny boat in the endless ocean. 'But...you don't have to paint this one, do you? Can't you do something else?'
She shook her head. Her eyes were still closed. 'If someone had a bad heart, would you treat his ear because it was easier?' Now she looked at him and there was no mockery at all in her face.”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

“He said that those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength and that they must make their way back into the common enterprise of man for without they do so it cannot go forward and they themselves will wither in bitterness. He said these things to me with great earnestness and great gentleness and in the light from the portal I could see that he was crying and I knew that it was my soul he wept for. I had never been esteemed in this way. To have a man place himself in such a position. I did not know what to say. That night I thought long and not without despair about what must become of me. I wanted very much to be a person of value and I had to ask myself how this could be possible if there were not something like a soul or like a spirit that is in the life of a person and which could endure any misfortune or disfigurement and yet be no less for it. If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to the hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I’d always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily. I knew that courage came with less struggle for some than for others but I believed that anyone who desired it could have it. That the desire was the thing itself. The thing itself. I could think of nothing else of which that was true.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

“He looked down at the floor, at the shambles of the pieces he had made, and wiped his face with his arm. "Mother," he said, and stopped. Now Molly moved. Somehow, she reached him before he could speak again, and she held him tightly, and he held her, and they both wept.
"Sorry I busted everything."
"You'll make more."
"I wanted to show you."
"I looked at them all. They were very good--the hands especially."
"They were hard. The fingers were funny, but I couldn't make them not funny."
"Hands are the hardest of all.”
― Kate Wilhelm, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang