This is our privy. Don’t ever let Mrs. Byrne catch you…

“Mr. Grote shows me how he grows wild rice in the stream and collects the seeds. The rice is nutty and brown. He plants…

— Christina Baker Kline

“I try to forget the horror of what happened. Or—perhaps forget is the wrong word. How can I forget? And yet how can I…

— Christina Baker Kline

“don’t know how much of my memory of this time is affected by my age now and how much is a result of the…

— Christina Baker Kline

“The stark gray sky and bare tree limbs feel more suited to her than the uncomplicated promise of sunny spring days.”

— Christina Baker Kline

“Sometimes these spirits have been more real to me than people, more real than God. They fill silence with their weight, dense and warm,…

— Christina Baker Kline

“Every Easter she and her mother planted those crocuses near the fence beside the driveway, and soon enough a whole cluster of them, white…

— Christina Baker Kline

“Babies pay no attention to the clock.”

— Christina Baker Kline

“Mr. Kaminski pulled a chain hanging from the pressed-metal kitchen ceiling, and light seeped from a bulb, casting a wan glow over a scarred…

— Christina Baker Kline

“Before we leave the gravesite, Mary sings Mother's favorite gospel hymn ... Mary's lovely voice rises and lingers in the air, and by the…

— Christina Baker Kline

“for the first time since the fire, my worries are gone. I feel a joy so strong it’s almost painful—a knife’s edge of joy.”

— Christina Baker Kline

“What was it the teacher in her Legal Issues class said the other day? Never bring up a point you don’t have an answer…

— Christina Baker Kline

“Mrs. Scatcherd raps Dutchy's knuckles several times with a long wooden ruler, though it seems to me a halfhearted penalty. He barely winces, then…

— Christina Baker Kline

“(There are many ways to be crippled, I’ve learned over the years, many forms of paralysis.)”

— Christina Baker Kline

“This girl may never go anywhere. She should at least know that adventure is in her bones.” When”

— Christina Baker Kline

“only link we had to our future was a name scrawled on a piece of paper my father tucked in his shirt pocket as…

— Christina Baker Kline