Jan Ellison Quotes

I hoped with every mothering cell in my body. I hoped with every scrap of power and will, every particle of knowing you, the years and years of you, the joy and hurt, the work and pride, the worry and...

I wanted that whole society frozen in revelry, and I wanted my feelings frozen, too. My life and all the things that had happened or might happen to me seemed distilled and poignant, and the evenings...

He was so appealing, standing there, so useful and solid and familiar, I wanted to fall into him and demand to be forgiven.

He did not often listen when I talked, so I ended up telling him things more than once, after a while not bothering to tell him much at all.

Emme. Like the letter. Like an eclipse. A force of nature that keeps coming around, taking out the lights.

I felt not jealousy so much as shame for not understanding the bond between them. The bond that was stalwart in the face of complacency and cruelty and wandering desire. The habit of each other that w...

I carried on drinking excessively as long as I could—right up to the moment I decided to become a mother. It was not so difficult, then, to stop. The stakes changed, and you grew inside me, and the mu...

I became a great internal shrug. All my organs gave way to the path of least resistance. I felt myself dislocating, but the dislocation did not have the expected result. Instead of removing me, it mad...

Actually, when a tree falls, it creates shock waves. And when the shock waves reach an ear or an artificial mechanism like a microphone, they’re transmitted into what we call sound, you said. The shoc...

Where were all the people I loved? I could feel them, flung about, the distance between us a crushing weight that I myself had put there.

Most never know the condition exists, because the single kidney grows large enough to accommodate

The heart is large, and there is more than one material in the bucket we call love. I loved your father.

But also because the London I paint is colored by the pencil I hold, and the pencil I hold wants a picture with an ending we can all bear. Malcolm

How can I be certain I’m not manufacturing a memory to match the evidence? You can’t rely on memory. You can’t rely on ancient artifacts, either, to tell you a story you can live with. You can rely on...

Let’s all throw unhappiness overboard.

He somehow knew it was more important to be reassuring, to seem to be in command of the situation, than to be right. And he was always willing to give in when he was found out to be wrong. The

I suppose unrequited love is the hardest kind to shed because it is not really love at all. It is a half-love, and we are forever stomping around trying to get hold of the other half. W

Children will end up a world away, whether you want them to or not—unaware of the havoc being wreaked upon their histories back home.

Of course it is upon the rubble of ancient history that the present stands.

I hoped until it hurt. I hoped so hard I felt it finally turn to prayer.