“My entire life has felt like chance. Random moments of loss and connection. This is the first one that feels, instead, like… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“I am ninety-one years old, and almost everyone who was once in my life is now a ghost. Sometimes these” — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“I have found that the biggest moments in life, the ones that change everything, usually catch you by surprise.” — 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 Copy Share Image
“The first twenty-three years of my life are the ones that shaped me, and the fact” — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“...life hinges on small moments and seemingly trivial decisions. ” — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“Vivian said she wanted to clean out her attic. But I think what she really wanted was to see what was in… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“The bitterness and alcohol and depression are stripped away from these phantom incarnations, and they console and protect me in death as… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“No substitute for the living, perhaps, but I wasn’t given a choice. I could take solace in their presence or I could… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“the people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments. They’re with us in the grocery store,… — 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 Copy Share Image
“Maybe, I think, someone here will want me. Maybe I’ll have a life I’ve never dared to imagine, in a bright, snug… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“Mr. Grote doesn’t believe in government telling him what to do. Tell the truth, he doesn’t believe in government at all. He… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“My hands are clammy. It’s a terrible kind of anticipation, not knowing what we’re walking into. The last time I felt this… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
In my teens I fancied myself an artist; I hung out with the eccentric art teacher at my high school, painted still… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“Each moment of loss, she has come to believe, contains within it the possibility of a new life. When the unimaginable happens,… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“don’t know how much of my memory of this time is affected by my age now and how much is a result… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“In Mr. Reed’s classroom there’s a photo of Molly Molasses taken near the end of her life. In it she sits ramrod… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“There she is, that girl, on a planet of grass. Her wants are simple: to tilt her face to the sun and… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“It had been two years since we left our home on the west coast of Ireland. Life was hard there, too; our… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“They call this an orphan train, children, and you are lucky to be on it. You are leaving behind an evil place,… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“Sometimes a sanctuary, sometimes a prison, that house on the hill has always been my home. I've spent my life yearning toward… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“The stark gray sky and bare tree limbs feel more suited to her than the uncomplicated promise of sunny spring days.” — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“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 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 them, white… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“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 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 an answer… — Christina Baker Kline 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 winces, then… — Christina Baker Kline Copy Share Image
