Barbara

“What d'ya mean, where the crawdads sing? Ma used to say that." Kya remembered Ma always encouraging her to explore the marsh: "Go as far as you can --- way out yonder where the crawdads sing."
Tate said, "Just means far in the bush where critters are wild, still behaving like critters.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“I'll keep in touch, says Lige, ain't going to let you go. This makes John Coke very quiet. John is a tall man and thin and maybe he don't have much painted on his face. He likes to make his decisions and then do a thing. He has my back and he wants the best world for Winona and he don't neglect his pals. When Lige Magan intimates his seeming love for him, John Cole does show something on his face though. Maybe remembers the old sick days when John Cole couldn't move a muscle and that Lige danced attendance. Why should a man help another man? No need, the world don't care about that. The world is just a passing parade of cruel moments and long drear stretches where nothing is going on but the chicory drinking and whiskey and cards. No requirement for nothing else tucked in there. We're strange people, soldiers stuck out in wars. We ain't saying no laws in Washington. We ain't walking on yon great lawns. Storms kill us, and battles, and the earth closes over and no one need say a word and I don't believe we mind. Happy to breathe because we seen terror and horror and then for a while they ain't in dominion. Bibles weren't wrote for us nor any books. We ain't maybe what people do call human since we ain't partaking in the bread of heaven. But if God was trying to make an excuse for us He might point at that strange love between us. Like when you fumbling about in the darkness and you light a lamp and the light comes up and rescue things. Objects in a room and the face of the man who seeing a dug-up treasure to you. John Cole. Seems a food. Bread of earth. The lamplight touching his eyes and another light answering.”
― Sebastian Barry, Days Without End

“Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson