Marte > Recent Status Updates

«Vi skal ikke bo her lenger», hvisker hun, og jeg lurer på om hun kommer til å huske det i morgen når han er full av anger og myk i hendene.

Tiden stanset da hun ga opp eller ofret det hun hadde sett for seg. Et område i henne ble liggende brakk. Dette området blir større og større.

De ler igjen, befriende, opprørsk, de ligner ikke seg selv, eller kanskje det er akkurat det de gjør, de ligner endelig seg selv, og resten av tiden, utenfor klubben, er de bare lydige skygger i familiens tjeneste.

Hver gang hun gjør som hun vil, og det er heller ikke ofte, må hun alltid gjøre det godt igjen. Slik er det. Hun har mest lyst til å løpe etter henne og be om unnskyldning (…) Hun er så lei av disse tankene. Hun er så lei av følelsene sine. De er ikke sanne lenger. De er ikke en gang hennes. Det er hun som ser med andres øyne. Det er hun som tenker andres tanker. Det er hun som føler andres følelser.

Hjelper det å snakke om det som ikke ble noe av? Det er ingen som orker å høre uansett. Det er som å snakke med seg selv.

(Abra:) «Lately I never felt good enough. I always wanted to explain to him that I was not good.»

(Lee:) «And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good. Is that it?»

(Lee to Adam:) «Maybe, kneeling down to atoms, they’re becoming atomized in their souls. Maybe a specialist is only a coward, afraid to look out of his little cage. And think what any specialist misses—the whole world over his fence.»

The train delivered quite a crowd for Salinas, returning relatives home for Thanksgiving, their hands entangled in cartons and gift-wrapped paper boxes.

One thing late or early can disrupt everything around it, and the disturbance runs outward in bands like the waves from a dropped stone in a quiet pool.

The split second has been growing more and more important to us.

He drove south from King City over the county road, *through the gathering forces of spring*, and the meadowlarks flew ahead, bubbling melody from the fence wires.

(Adam to Cal:) «He was a tough old man. And now I know what he meant. I’m the same as my father was. He didn’t allow me to be a person, and I haven’t seen my sons as people. That’s what Samuel meant.»

«My father made a mold and forced me into it,» Adam said. «I was a bad casting but I couldn’t be remelted. Nobody can be remelted. And so I remained a bad casting.»

(Lee to Cal:) «Whatever you do, it will be you who do it—not your mother.»

And as a few strokes on the nose will make a puppy head shy, so a few rebuffs will make a boy shy all over. But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy. And once a boy has suffered rejection, he will find rejection even where it does not exist—or worse, will draw it forth from people simply by expecting it.

«I had no reason to plant it,» Adam said. «We had that out before. You thought I would change. I have not changed.»

«Do you take pride in your hurt?» Samuel asked. «Does it make you seem large and tragic?»

«I don’t know.»

«Well, think about it. Maybe you’re playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.»

And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden.

"I don't very much believe in blood," said Samuel. I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb."

«‘… home was a place to sit around or work around, waiting for death the way you might wait for a dreadful picnic.’»

This is the most captivated I’ve been by a novel for a long time. Instantly drawn in, much due to a highly fascinating and very much intriguing cast of characters.