Caroline Bleeke

“You cannot know how many other miracles one sole miracle begets. She was not a savior. She did not confer salvation. She said we were to be the saviors. She said we know God only through each other. That God is not in us, but between us. That we deliver God to each other, like a flame passed from cupped hand to cupped hand. We bring God to life in each other.”
― Patricia Storace, The Book of Heaven

“Is she a good baby? People would ask me. Well, no, I'd say.

That swirl of hair on the back of her head. We must have taken a thousand pictures of it.”
― Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation

“And what does God ask of you?”
“To fly without wings. To do what seems impossible. To cling to our loves through the rapids of our hates. To know that God charges us with the task of making these miracles. They exist between person and person, as flame goes from candle to candle. To know that all we can know of right or wrong is through the way our acts are revealed in the lives of other people. There is no other way to see God. It is not given to us.”
― Patricia Storace, The Book of Heaven

“My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things. Nabokov didn't even fold his own umbrella. Vera licked his stamps for him.”
― Jenny Offill, Dept. of Speculation