Sing to the Oysters

These are two of my favorite quotes... I won’t say of all time, or out of all the books I’ve read. I’ve read a lot of books, and have a lot of favorites. But these are high on the list. These don’t make the most sense without context, but they feel sunshine-y bright, and they feel like the person I want to be in the world.

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“He saw it in her eyes. The anguish, the frustration. The terrible nothing that clawed inside and sought to smother her. She knew. It was there, inside. She had been broken.

Then she smiled. Oh, storms. She smiled anyway.

It was the single most beautiful thing he’d seen in his entire life.”

-Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance

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“God in heaven’s been raising you for this valley from the day you were born."

I was furious. He didn’t know anything about me or the day I was born or he’d never say such a foolish thing, sitting there so piously at his kitchen table, sounding for all the world like a Methodist preacher.

But then, oh, my blessed, he smiled. I guess from that moment I knew I was going to marry Joseph Wojtkiewicz—God, pope, three motherless children, unspellable surname and all. For when he smiled, he looked like the kind of man who would sing to the oysters.”

-Katherine Patterson, Jacob Have I Loved