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Book: A Thousand Acres
Quotes of Book: A Thousand Acres
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  1. Jane Smiley _ A Thousand Acres

    Otherwise, my life passed in a blur, that blessing of urban routine. The sense of distinct events that is so inescapable on a farm, where every rainstorm is thick with odor and color, and usefulness and timing, where omens of prosperity or ruin to come are sought in every change, where any of the world's details may contain the one thing that above all else you will regret not knowing, this sense lifted off me. Maybe another way of saying it is that I forgot I was still alive.
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  2. Jane Smiley _ A Thousand Acres

    I loved the house the way you would any new house, because it is populated by your future.
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  3. Jane Smiley _ A Thousand Acres

    Even in Minnesota, where the winter was a big topic of conversation and a permanent occasion for people's heroic self-regard, it was only winter on the highway a few hours out of the year. The rest of the time, traffic kept moving. Snow and rain were reduced to scenery nearly as much as any other kind of weather, something to look out the window at but nothing that hindered you. The
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  4. Jane Smiley _ A Thousand Acres

    However much these acres looked like a gift of nature, or of God, they were not. We went to church to pay our respects, not to give thanks.
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  5. Jane Smiley _ A Thousand Acres

    Daddy thinks history starts fresh every day, every minute, that time itself begins with the feelings he's having right now. That's how he keeps betraying us, why he roars at us with such conviction. We have to stand up to that, and say, at least to ourselves, that what he's done before is still with us, still right here in this room until there's true remorse. Nothing will be right until there's that." "He looks so, sort of, weakened." "Weakened is not enough. Destroyed isn't enough. He's got to repent and feel humiliation and regret. I won't be satisfied until he knows what he is.""Do we know what we are?""We know we aren't him. We know that to that degree we don't yet deserve the lowest circle of hell.
    book-quoteremorsefamilyhumiliation

  6. Jane Smiley _ A Thousand Acres

    So all I have is the knowledge that I saw! That I saw without being afraid and without turning away, and that I didn't forgive the unforgivable. Forgiveness is a reflex for when you can't stand what you know. I resisted that reflex. That's my sole, solitary, lonely accomplishment.
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  7. Jane Smiley _ A Thousand Acres

    We watched the swimmers and sunbathers and I thought about this. Had I faced all the facts? It seemed like I had, but actually, you never know, just by remembering, how many facts you were allowed to have faced. Your own endurance might be a pleasant fiction allowed you by others who've really faced the facts. The eerie feeling this thought gave me made me shiver in the hot wind.
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  8. Jane Smiley _ A Thousand Acres

    It is hard to know whether an air of self-confidence precedes or follows success.
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  9. Jane Smiley _ A Thousand Acres

    I dream about standing in the lunch line naked. It's always the lunch line in ninth grade.Nakedness dreams are very common.I suppose they are.
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  10. Jane Smiley _ A Thousand Acres

    Linda was just born when I had my first miscarriage, and for a while, six months maybe, the sight of those two babies, whom I had loved and cared for with real interest and satisfaction, affected me like a poison. All my tissues hurt when I saw them, when I saw Rose with them, as if my capillaries were carrying acid into the furthest reaches of my system. I was so jealous, and so freshly jealous every time I saw them, that I could hardly speak, and I wasn't very nice to Rose, since some visceral part of me simply blamed her for having what I wanted, and for having it so easily
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  11. Jane Smiley _ A Thousand Acres

    It was imperative that the growing discord in our family be made to appear minor. The indication that my father truly was beside himself was the way he had carried his argument with us to others. But we couldn't give in to that-we were well trained. We knew our roles and our strategies without hesitation and without consultation. The paramount value of looking right is not something you walk away from after a single night. After such a night as we had, in fact, it is something you embrace, the broken plank you are left with after the ship has gone down.
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  12. Jane Smiley _ A Thousand Acres

    poking around in this dump, as it would be
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