“A store-bought trinket with no history, no story. I knew, deep down, when he gave it to me that he didn't understand… — Christina Baker Kline History Copy Share Image
“so filled with nervous energy that I can feel the blood pumping through my heart.” — Christina Baker Kline Anxiety Copy Share Image
“The truth is, when I'm immersed in a book I'm less aware of the pain in my unpredictable arms and legs.” — Christina Baker Kline Book Copy Share Image
“Actually, I did it because when we lived on Indian Island we had this turtle named Shelly.” — Christina Baker Kline Turtle Copy Share Image
“Do you believe in fate?” I ask. “What’s that again?” “That everything is decided. You’re just—you know—living it out.” — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“Life’s small details are the ones that interest me, anyway. The big questions are too hard to parse.” — Christina Baker Kline Big questions Copy Share Image
“What was it the teacher in her Legal Issues class said the other day? Never bring up a point you don’t have… — Christina Baker Kline Teacher Copy Share Image
“Pushing the hair back from my face and tracing the line of my jaw with his finger, he says, “With you I’d… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“only link we had to our future was a name scrawled on a piece of paper my father tucked in his shirt… — Christina Baker Kline New york city Copy Share Image
“You can never escape the bonds of family history, no matter how far you travel. And the skeleton of a house can… — Christina Baker Kline Family Copy Share Image
“Wordsworth and Keats and Shelley. Our teacher made us memorize the words to “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” and alone in the… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“Every Easter she and her mother planted those crocuses near the fence beside the driveway, and soon enough a whole cluster of… — Christina Baker Kline Crocuses Copy Share Image
“You could be my daughter, you know,” Mr. Byrne tells me. “Your name—Dorothy . . . we always said we’d give to… — Christina Baker Kline Children Copy Share Image
“It was pouring earlier, great sheets of rain, and now the clouds outside the window are crystal tipped, like mountain peaks in… — Christina Baker Kline Beautiful writing Copy Share Image
“..As I watch her pine casket descend...I try to envision the reunion of a frail eighty year old woman with her decades… — Christina Baker Kline Marriage Copy Share Image
“When the breakfast dishes are cleared, she starts on the large midday meal: chicken pie or pot roast or fish stew; mashed… — Christina Baker Kline Food Copy Share Image
When something terrible happens, a lifetime of small events and unremarkable decisions, of unresolved anger, and unexplored fears begins to play itself… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“Well, then,” Mrs. Byrne says. “Let’s get back to work. Dorothy, your suitcase is in the foyer. We’ll discuss sleeping arrangements at… — Christina Baker Kline Discipline Copy Share Image
“And so your personality is shaped. You know too much, and this knowledge makes you wary. You grow fearful and mistrustful. The… — Christina Baker Kline Broken inside Copy Share Image
“Mrs. Scatcherd raps Dutchy's knuckles several times with a long wooden ruler, though it seems to me a halfhearted penalty. He barely… — Christina Baker Kline Orphans Copy Share Image
“Only hours earlier, my da had come in from his job at the bar and changed his clothes, as he always did… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“We mark the days by chores that need to be done, the way farm families have always done. Al feeds the hens… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“She offers me a bull’s-eye sweet, which she’s stashed in her apron pocket with a half-dozen half-smoked Afton butts—a mix of flavors… — Christina Baker Kline Poetry Copy Share Image
“Dusk softens the sharp points of trees outside my window; the sky slowly darkens, then blackens around an orb of moon. Hours… — Christina Baker Kline Dusk Copy Share Image
“WHEN YOUR WORLD is small, you learn every inch of it. You can trace it in the dark; you navigate it in… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“Because we're older. And this is where we belong." "No it isn't. It is just where we ended up.” — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“Look, I don't mean to be rude, but you could never have a normal life, even if that's what you thought you… — Christina Baker Kline Life Copy Share Image
And so it is that you learn how to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“Molly is suddenly struck by the fact that Vivian wrote these words on this sheet of paper more than eighty years ago.… — Christina Baker Kline Language Copy Share Image
“My own awakening feels as momentous. I too am blanketed, my harsh edges obscured and transformed.” — Christina Baker Kline Awakening Copy Share Image
“The child you select is yours for free,” he adds, “on a ninety-day trial. At which point, if you so choose, you… — Christina Baker Kline Children Copy Share Image
“That man would have chipped away at your heart bit by bit until there was nothing left. It may have been bruised,… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“Well, thanks,” she says nonchalantly. “But does this mean I have to read it?” “Absolutely. There will be a quiz,” Vivian says.” — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“The first twenty-three years of my life are the ones that shaped me, and the fact” — Christina Baker Kline Life Copy Share Image
“I look up into the starless sky. My heart pounds. This silent badlands scares me more than nighttime in the city, with… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“(There are many ways to be crippled, I’ve learned over the years, many forms of paralysis.)” — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“You can live for a long time inside the shell you were born in. But one day it’ll become too small.” “Then” — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“What I couldn’t see is that sometimes the healing is not in the forgetting but in the letting go.” — Christina Baker Kline Forgetting Copy Share Image
I have a lot of empathy for women who fit their writing into the crevices of their too-busy lives, as I once… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“He squints at me. “Except for the red hair and freckles, you look okay. You’ll be fine and dandy sitting at the… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
