Quotes from Alice Elliott Dark

They hugged, pressing each other's arms, and their brief embraces buoyed them up - forbearance and grace passing back and forth between them like a piece of shared clothing, designated for use by whoever needed it most.

Everyone who'd lost something of crucial importance wished he or she could go back to the moment when it was still theirs. The wish was so powerful it seemed it might reverse the direction of time. It bore apparitions and ghosts.

But there was a last time. An unforeseen and uncommemorated last time. I don't remember it. That, more than anything, describes aging to me—the letting go of one activity after the next, with no fanfare. Just realizing later that the last time has come and gone,

Writing is waiting. That's the whole of it. If you sit in your chair not doing anything else for long enough, the answer will come. You do have to be in your chair, though, ready to write it down.

What does it matter if she breaks something, compared to her feeling as though she belongs?

father-daughter relationship is unique in the kind of delight it brings to both persons, a proprietary pride that also contains an understanding of the boundaries that hold the two

The leaves have mostly fallen, so the pines are having their glorious reign.

I had been judicious in my warnings and instructions, phrasing them so as not to scare her, or inhibit her. I'm determined not to teach her to fear everything, as we were taught, or that manners are preferable to feelings. I honestly don't know yet what free is, but I know what it isn't.

Nine-year-old girls are perfect humans,

Marriage should be a long conversation leading to freedom

He saw me notice and took my hands in his. "It's too quiet for me, Cousin, and too dry. You understand, don't you?" I don't, but I was charmed, as he knew I would be, in spite of my being against charm in principle.

Stop it, she told herself. Buck up. Buck up. Things were going well. Very well. What did it matter what people thought? Robert was starting to relax. Those old women—who cared? They were as irrelevant as Polly herself was, and she was shown and told about her diminished status at every juncture.

But there was a last time. An unforeseen and uncommemorated last time. I don't remember it. That, more than anything, describes aging to me—the letting go of one activity after the next, with no fanfare. Just realizing later that the last time has come and gone," Agnes said.

I have often wondered why I've survived. Yet I know the answer. It's luck. Luck is a greater factor than anyone who succeeds ever wants to believe. The idea that one is destined to be the person who remains standing, the person smart enough to make all the money, to retain the beauty, is far more seductive. If there is good luck, there is bad luck. That is a reality no one wants to contemplate. But it is reality. I am merely lucky to be alive.

It was a red flag, Polly and Robert decided, not to have old friends.

She'd been raised not to dwell on such injustices, because dwelling made it difficult to be good company in the present. Perhaps it was necessary to dwell, though, even to be obsessive, for any real change to occur. Plenty of Quakers dwelled—the American Friends Service Committee, for example—and hadn't that done the world a lot of good? When she got back to Haverford, she'd volunteer for something to do with animals—if Dick could spare her.

A person of her class. A person whose habits and manners stamped out the development of desire and predilection.

Nan worked very hard. We didn't speak, but her breaths are a vocabulary. When she's concentrating, her tongue moves across her bottom lip as if polishing it. The air in the back of her throat laps, tide-like.

Maud had taught her how to go to sleep, and how to put herself back to sleep at night if she awoke. It was a great accomplishment, but no one wanted to hear about the triumphant work of mothers. It was a taken-for-granted form of labor, worth little to no money. She had to pat her own back for that.

Now she has headed back up toward the Chalet. Has her father signaled her in some way? I don't see any sign of him. He never seems to pay any attention to her nor tries to know where she is. Polly found his behavior negligent, but perhaps Nan is—in general—better off for it. Not every parent pays attention in a way that is to the child's benefit.

She'd never go so far as to consider she'd made a mistake marrying someone whose interior furnishings and emotional tastes were so hopelessly different than her own—for Dick was innocent

The days beaded a smooth chain of fine feeling.

Why did we stop running and playing? We loved it so much. Who made the rule that the child's pleasure in the body must come to an end? I blame the Puritans!

There was nothing to replace an old friend who knew everything, who'd spent enough time in the childhood home to know the atmosphere and how emotions and silences transpired—to know how the other had really grown up.