Frances O'Roark Dowell Quotes & Sayings

When I think about everything that's happened since school started, well, I don't think the word 'normal' applies to any of it. Verbena is right - I'm way past normal. Only I've realized that when you move beyond normal, the road you're on doesn't necessarily take you to the land of the abnormal or the weird or the freakish. Instead you might find yourself in a place where people build Freedom School and have the courage to live large. It's a place where people don't worry too much when they get a little goat poop on their shoes. — Frances O'Roark Dowell

Perhaps you'll apprentice to a healer when you're older," Grete suggested. "I'd say you have the gift for it."
Hen reddened, then seemed suddenly fascinated with a speck on her shoe. "Be nice to have a gift for something," she said after a moment. "But they don't let girls apprentice, now, do they?"
Grete harrumphed. "A bunch of fools, the lot who came up with that system. You lose half the world's brainpower that way. — Frances O'Roark Dowell

That was a funny thing about friends, Marylin thought. You could know a person practically your whole life and she could still surprise you. — Frances O'Roark Dowell

Tobin, my man, you are going to learn about chickens. And when you to learn about chickens, you will learn about life. — Frances O'Roark Dowell

What's really weird is my mom's clothes smell like her. I mean, her perfume, and so all day it's like m mom has been walking right beside me. Which, you have to admit, a pretty freaky feeling. — Frances O'Roark Dowell

You gonna stand in my backyard and ignore me to my face? — Frances O'Roark Dowell

I'm not done arguing with you, Mrs.Fletcher. I'm going to convince you yet." "Well I reckon I got ten or twenty more years in me before I pass on," Granny told him. "So feel free to take your time. — Frances O'Roark Dowell

Everybody's broken, sweetie. God helps us get put back together.
~Rev. Mayes
The Kind of Friends We Used to Be — Frances O'Roark Dowell

I like your mama,' Trena tells me. 'She seems like good people.'
'Smile!' my mom calls to me from across the room, and I look at her and smile. Because she is good people. And she means well, even if she does drive me crazy. — Frances O'Roark Dowell

A friend is someone whose face you can see in the dark. — Frances O'Roark Dowell

He was a big talker, someone who liked words for words' sake, the sound of them, the way you can pile them up in your mouth and make a poem if you speill them out the right way.
p92 — Frances O'Roark Dowell

4. If you do not give your chickens enough space, light, air, and walking-around room, they will eat one another. — Frances O'Roark Dowell

What filled the rooms of Grete's cottage so decidedly were woven baskets and wooden boxes and clay pots glazed in red and blue, each with its own mishmash of this and that. Roots and leaves still redolent of dirt. Balls of scratchy wool-purple twining into pink easing into periwinkle fading into gray. At least three boxes held squares and strips of fabric, all colors, and eight pots overflowed with apples.
The walls were lined with shelves, the shelves were lined with books. Wordless spines peered out. As soon as Isabelle saw them, she itched to open it up and read it from cover to cover. — Frances O'Roark Dowell

Dream girl? Ain't such a thing. You walk, you talk, you got mammary glands, well, that's gonna do it right there for most guys. — Frances O'Roark Dowell

I have to say, it felt good to be wanted, son. Felt real good. — Frances O'Roark Dowell

Stars. Trees breathe in starlight year after year, and it goes deep into their bones. So when you cut a tree open, you smell a hundred years' worth of light. Ancient starlight that took millions of years to reach earth. That's why trees smell so beautiful and old. — Frances O'Roark Dowell

You can't expect a person to love an animal they might see decapitated at any minute. It ain't realistic, I told Miss Blue, who was gulping down her worm. She looked up at me like it shocked her to learn that some chickens got treated that way. — Frances O'Roark Dowell

My dad, who my mom always refers to as DH for Darling Husband, was protrayed as a 'let's look on the bright side of things' kind of guy, the pillar my everbumbling mother leans on in times of distress. — Frances O'Roark Dowell

Granny sat down on the step and stared off into the trees. That girl right there, she was my only child. I have lost two husbands, one by death, the other by divorce, and I have lost my parents and my brothers and sisters. But nothing ever pierced me to the core like that little girl's dying. I know it wasn't your daddy's fault. I know I messed up by filling a report to Social Services. Is that what you want to here? Is that what it takes for you not to be mad at me? — Frances O'Roark Dowell

Quit it already. I'm pretty enough as it is. — Frances O'Roark Dowell