Emily Williams

“This is the carpenter's painful truth: that nothing is true.
By true, he means level, plumb, perfect. Every room you've ever entered has been off by at least a sixteenth of an inch -- more probably an eighth. Guaranteed. We think we live in boxes until we look closer and find we're in fact living in irregular shapes, in big, misshapen accidents.
Which makes carpenters the high priests of living with mistakes. And while sloppiness is the most grievous insult you could throw at another carpenter, true perfection is maddeningly unattainable, which is why it's never spoken of. Because even after you cut a piece of wood and lay it straight, it lives on after you've finished, soaking up moisture, twisting, bowing, and warping into unintended forms. Our lives are no different.”
― Michael Christie, Greenwood

“Take heart, she seems to say. The world has been on the brink of ending before. The dust has always been waiting to swallow us. People have always struggled and suffered. Your poverty is not shameful. It is not a failure of your character. Life, by its very nature, is precarious. And your struggles are never for nothing.”
― Michael Christie, Greenwood

“This is the carpenter's painful truth: nothing is true.

...We think we live in boxes until we look closer and find we're in fact living in irregular shapes, in big, misshapen accidents.”
― Michael Christie, Greenwood

“Time, Liam has learned, is not an arrow. Neither is it a road. It goes in no particular direction. It simply accumulates—in the body, in the world—like wood does. Layer upon layer. Light, then dark. Each one dependent upon the last. Each year impossible without the one preceding it. Each triumph and each disaster written forever in its structure. His own life, he can admit now, will never be clear, will never be unblemished, will never be reclaimed. Because it is impossible to ungrow what has already grown, to undo what is already done. Still, people trust the things he’s built, and there is something to that. It’s not enough, but it’s what he’ll take with him.”
― Michael Christie, Greenwood