Renee Freeman

“[Esme] 'And then I was born and then she [her mother Lily] died.'

[Edith 'Ditte' Thompson, her godmother] 'Yes.'

'But when we talk about her, she comes to life.'

'Never forget that Esme. Words are our tools of resurrection.”
― Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words

“I took it and opened it up into a perfect square, and then I buried my face in it. It was absorbent and smelled of church. It was like crying onto the hem of the pope's best dress.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

“Florence’s mother liked to imagine a life of diamonds and gilt for her daughter. But this, this, was the life Florence wanted. A blue-and-white teacup stuffed with clementine peels. A tangle of white ranunculus in a ceramic pitcher on the windowsill. Amanda had once put a vase of those same flowers on her desk at work. The whole place looked like a painting by Vermeer. And it was cold. Chilly gusts rattled the windows in their frames. Someone had told Florence once that glass was actually a liquid that settled slowly, over eons; that was why in old houses the windows were always thicker at the bottom than at the top. Was that true? Florence didn’t care. In the same way she couldn’t understand why people were so determined to expose Maud Dixon’s identity, she couldn’t understand why they needed to pin things down, turn poetry into fact. Wasn’t poetry better? Why would you turn something beautiful into something quotidian?”
― Alexandra Andrews, Who Is Maud Dixon?

“Im trying to imply that putting a church inside a hospital is like looking at an oil painting to see what the weather will be like.”
― Marianne Cronin, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot