Kay

“Rule of thumb: The closer you are to a story, the further away you will be from the truth.”
― Lisa Barr, Woman on Fire

“each had so much to say that neither was willing to expend the effort, and so said nothing.”
― Shirley Russak Wachtel, A Castle in Brooklyn

“Shoes tell the whole story—who you are, what you can afford, if you are an impostor or the real deal.”
― Lisa Barr, Woman on Fire

“Esme turns. The wind steals her hair, flipping it above her head, streaking it over her face. There is the girl, sitting as Esme knew she would be, in the sand, legs crossed. She is watching her with that slightly anxious frown of hers. But no, Esme is wrong. She is not watching her, she is looking past her, towards the horizon. She is, Esme sees, thinking of the lover. This girl is remarkable to her. She is a marvel. From all her family—her and Kitty and Hugo and all the other babies and her parents—from all of them, there is only this girl. She is the only one left. They have all narrowed down to this black-haired girl sitting on the sand, who has no idea that her hands and her eyes and the tilt of her head and the fall of her hair belong to Esme’s mother. We are all, Esme decides, just vessels through which identities pass: we are lent features, gestures, habits, then we hand them on. Nothing is our own. We begin in the world as anagrams of our antecedents.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox