Washing the Dead is an illuminating and intricately layered novel about the complicated legacies that pass from mother to daughter, and about the ways that understanding our own history helps make us who we are. Michelle Brafman is an insightful… — Carolyn Parkhurst Copy Share Image
“Anyway, I thought, it's wishful thinking, all this talk of ghosts. If the dead wandered among us, their spirits still present on this earth,… — Carolyn Parkhurst Copy Share Image
“Walking out of the store with my parrot & sushi, I feel hideous, like everything I've done must be written on my skin. I walk through the streets of Tokyo with my cameraman behind me, knowing that anyone who looks at me will be able to see myshame, my sorrow, my regrets as ugly as scars. -Cassie” — Carolyn Parkhurst Copy Share
“That's the fundamental flaw in the illusion that writers like to maintain, the idea that we can craft anything approaching the truth. No matter… — Carolyn Parkhurst Copy Share Image
How can it be, I wondered, that we can be lying in bed next to a person we love wholly and helplessly, a person we love more than our own breath, and still ache to think of the one who caused us pain all those years ago? It's the betrayal of this second heart of ours, its flesh tied off… — Carolyn Parkhurst Copy Share
“This is happening; this is not fiction. And the thing about life? It doesn't have texture at all. Go ahead, feel the space around… — Carolyn Parkhurst Copy Share Image
“I remember my wife in white. I remember her walking toward me on our wedding day, a bouquet of red flowers in her hand,… — Carolyn Parkhurst Copy Share Image
The conclusion I have reached is that, above all, dogs are witnesses. They are allowed access to our most private moments. They are there when we think we are alone. Think of what they could tell us. They sit on the laps of presidents. They see acts of love and violence, quarrels and feuds, and the secret play of children.… — Carolyn Parkhurst Copy Share
It's true, isn't it, that each of us has two hearts? The secret heart, curled behind like a fist, living gnarled and shrunken beneath… — Carolyn Parkhurst Copy Share Image
The simplest thing that can be said about any person, any relationship, is that it's not simple at all. — Carolyn Parkhurst Copy Share Image
“The unexpected thing, the miraculous thing, is when a car that's been shattered in a crash, that's been left in the rain to rust… — Carolyn Parkhurst Copy Share Image
What's it like, Lexy? You wake up and you feel - what? Heaviness, an ache inside, a weight, yes. A soft crumpling of the flesh. A feeling like all the surfaces inside you have been rubbed raw. A voice in your head - no, not voices, not like hearing voices, nothing that crazy, just your own inner voice, the one… — Carolyn Parkhurst Copy Share
