Kelsey Burnette > Recent Status Updates

Sasha reminded herself God did not live inside a book or a building. God resided in trees and soil and wind, none of which existed in the sterile courtroom.

Gino whistled a complicated melody as they walked. The notes rang clear and sharp, Ike a bold stroke of color on a blank canvas. Sasha walked a few paces behind him, allowing the notes to rise above him and rain down on her.

Because if you want to beat a lot of bureaucrats at their own game, be prepared to beat them with words… And maybe I was a loser who’d never gone to college, a foster kid who’d largely educated herself with a library card, but I was a pissed-off sesquipedalian bitch crammed to the gills with words.

People who die with too many books on their To Br Read stack sometimes end up here. The ones who don’t feel they can pass over until they catch up on their reading.

I mean to life a simple life, to choose a simple shell I can carry easily—like a hermit crab.

Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith.

I’ve always appreciated women who were interesting rather than beautiful…You don’t need beauty, but you must have style. Embrace what you have, I say. If you’re tall, wear high heels. If you have big hands, wear chunky rings…It’s not about the dress it’s about the life you’re living in the dress.

A woman is more than a vessel meant to carry babies and grief.

He never rushed or fiddled nervously or found a length of silence…an awkward vessel to fill with chatter. He rarely looked to the future, and to the past even less, but gathered up the current moment in both hands to admire its particulars…

He strolled slowly, casually, like his only destination was his next step…

Beyond that,Main Street dove abruptly into the hillside like a period at the end of a short sentence.

“We’re not allowed to die for our children, the universe won’t let us, because then there wouldn’t be any mothers left.”

“Nothing weighs more than someone else’s belief in you.”

“Art is so big, so unfathomable, that it teaches us to mourn for strangers.”

“…grief does so many strange things to people, and one of those things is that we forget how to breathe.”

What a great opening paragraph!

“Louise is a teenager, the best kind of human…”

This book is a brutal read, but SA Cosby is a brilliant writer, so it’s worth it. I’m marking this page because Cosby references WV writer Breece D’J Pancake, who I agree is “one of the finest writers many people have never heard of…” Died way too young.

He shrugged and then sighed out a well-known native proverb. “Who can understand women and the sky?”

“Kenya was forever shedding its skin and showing itself to you all over again. You didn’t need to sail away for that. You only needed to turn around.”

“…refilling my brandy glass until the entire evening seemed to tip pleasantly on one edge.”

Our lives are designed to have three parts. The first is education. The second, creation. And in part three, we put our experience to use and protect those who are weaker. This third stage, which you have entered, can be one of incredible power.

The truth is…every recipe is a spell. And all cooks are witches.

“…God needed some people to look at things the rest of the world couldn’t face.”

“In full disclosure, I’m not a sequins gal…I mean, it was fun for a day.”

“It was fun for a life,” Patricia says. “But now I wear linen and drink in the afternoon, and so be it…”

It’s a lot of what motherhood is too. Moving from being self-centered to being other-centered. A huge chunk of motherhood is realizing that your children are little bits of your own self out there eating cereal straight from the box and learning to pay their own taxes and wondering whether or not now is the right time to adopt a cat.

You look like the kind of guy who could teach an uptight businesswoman how to sleep in on Sundays.

I’d like to spread him on toast and eat him in the bath, please. Thank you.

You acquire a whole new set of interests when you have kids. Whatever they’re into, you kind of have to get into yourself, otherwise you have nothing to talk about with them.

He’s got a face that’s constantly inviting you to lie in a hammock and find shapes in the clouds.

Grief is just love looking for a place to settle.