Nelda Caulk

“Then Raya saw Rebecca West, the fourteen-year-old who only saved her own life by testifying against her mother, and then she saw her own face reflected in these girls – a swirl of chance, and life and sorrow.”
― Sara Pascoe, Being a Witch, and Other Things I Didn't Ask For

“Early on a difficult climb, especially a difficult solo climb, you constantly feel the abyss pulling at your back. To resist takes a tremendous conscious effort; you don’t dare let your guard down for an instant. The siren song of the void puts you on edge; it makes your movements tentative, clumsy, herky-jerky. But as the climb goes on, you grow accustomed to the exposure, you get used to rubbing shoulders with doom, you come to believe in the reliability of your hands and feet and head. You learn to trust your self-control. By and by your attention becomes so intensely focused that you no longer notice the raw knuckles, the cramping thighs, the strain of maintaining nonstop concentration. A trancelike state settles over your efforts; the climb becomes a clear-eyed dream. Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence—the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes—all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“We appreciate the complicated and wonderful gifts you give us in each other. And we appreciate the task you put down before us, of loving each other the best we can, even as you love us.”
― Kate DiCamillo, Because of Winn-Dixie

“She hurries out of the hammering rain into the puddled shelter of St Pancras. As arranged, he's waiting outside WH Smith, and her heart jerks like a bad dog on a lead.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man