William Kimball

“she had striven to be patient and steadfast no matter what life presented, every time she learned she was carrying yet another child under her breast—again and again. With each son added to the flock she recognized that her responsibility had grown for ensuring the prosperity and secure position of the lineage. Tonight she realized that her ability to survey everything at once and her watchfulness had also grown with each new child entrusted to her care. Never had she seen it so clearly as on this evening—what destiny had demanded of her and what it had given her in return with her seven sons. Over and over again joy had quickened the beat of her heart; fear on their behalf had rent it in two. They were her children, these big sons with their lean, bony, boy’s bodies, just as they had been when they were small and so plump that they barely hurt themselves when they tumbled down on their way between the bench and her knee. They were hers, just as they had been back when she lifted them out of the cradle to her milk-filled breast and had to support their heads, which wobbled on their frail necks the way a bluebell nods on its stalk. Wherever they ended up in the world, wherever they journeyed, forgetting their mother—she thought that for her, their lives would be like a current in her own life; they would be one with her, just as they had been when she alone on this earth knew about the new life hidden inside, drinking from her blood and making her cheeks pale. Over and over she had endured the sinking, sweat-dripping anguish when she realized that once again her time had come; once again she would be pulled under by the groundswell of birth pains—until she was lifted up with a new child in her arms. How much richer and stronger and braver she had become with each child was something that she first realized tonight.”
― Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter

“If only it were possible to love without injury—fidelity isn’t enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation.”
― Graham Greene, The Quiet American

“I learned to appreciate the wide range of chores. Our wives must do when we men go away to work. I would go shopping in the village and set a nice table, and at night I would wait at the door for Usch to come home. This period confirmed for me what I firmly believe to be the truth—that without Usch I am nothing.”
― Raymond F. Toliver, The Blond Knight of Germany: A biography of Erich Hartmann

“Are you so arrogant that you think yourself capable of sinning so badly that God’s mercy is not great enough? . . .”
― Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavransdatter