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“I watched her for a long time, memorizing her shoulders, her long-legged gait. This was how girls left. They packed up their suitcases and walked away in high heels. They pretended they weren't crying, that it wasn't the worst day of their lives. That they didn't want their mothers to come running after them, begging their forgiveness, that they wouldn't have gone down on their knees and thanked god if they could stay. ”
― White Oleander
― White Oleander
“She laughed so easily when she was happy. But also when she was sad.”
― White Oleander
― White Oleander
“I understood why she did it. At that moment I knew why people tagged graffiti on the walls of neat little houses and scratched the paint on new cars and beat up well-tended children. It was only natural to want to destroy something you could never have.”
― White Oleander
― White Oleander
“That was the thing about words, they were clear and specific-chair, eye, stone- but when you talked about feelings, words were too stiff, they were this and not that, they couldn't include all the meanings. In defining, they always left something out.”
― White Oleander
― White Oleander
“They wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled, someone deep and rich as a field, a wide-hipped mother, awesome, immense, women like huge soft couches, mothers coursing with blood, mother's big enough, wide enough for us to hide in, to sink down to the bottom of of, mother's who would breathe for us when we could not breathe anymore, who would fight for us, who would kill for us, die for us.”
― White Oleander
― White Oleander
Our Shared Shelf
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— last activity Jun 07, 2026 09:53PM
OUR SHARED SHELF IS CURRENTLY DORMANT AND NOT MANAGED BY EMMA AND HER TEAM. Dear Readers, As part of my work with UN Women, I have started reading ...more
Elisabeth’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Elisabeth’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,443 books
|
158 friends
218 books
|
54 friends
316 books
|
13 friends
73 books
|
20 friends
572 books
|
279 friends
121 books
|
21 friends
127 books
|
2 friends
16 books
|
2 friends
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