Sena Jeter Naslund Quotes & Sayings

That's the way it is in life. You let go of what is beautiful and unique. You pursue something new and don't even know that the wind of your own running is a thief. — Sena Jeter Naslund

What, in nature," Kit asked, "is the most beautiful thing you've seen? Or the most terrible?"
"The Dismals," Giles answered promptly. "A beautiful aberration in the lay of the land
North Alabama. A section mysteriously lowered, strewn with boulders, ferny, mossy, cooler
the vegetation, they say, typical of Canada. There the creek runs clear, but all other Alabama rivers and waterways are muddy with sediment. I even like the name
the Dismals. An eternal place, disjunct with the climate, the time, and its location."
"You think being dismal is an attractive association with eternity?" I asked.
"It is a cool Eden in the Southern summer heat. What's yours, Una?"
"The Kentucky hills in spring. Layers of pink and white
redbud and dogwood."
"And you?" Giles asked Kit.
"Stars," he said. That was all. — Sena Jeter Naslund

Honesty, like any inclination, can become a ruling passion, a monomania almost. — Sena Jeter Naslund

Where there is a lack of other connections, of meaningful moments, in our lives, music can often full the gap. — Sena Jeter Naslund

Pardon me, dear human self, capable of the most heinous degradation, capable of soaring. — Sena Jeter Naslund

I feel only sorrow that I have failed to please. Sorrow-and not resentment-for my mother says that resentment is the most readily visible of all the sinful emotions, but sorrow can enhance one's sweetness and appeal. Resentment, the empress says, is like a snake that nests in the bosom, and it can turn and strike her who harbors it. — Sena Jeter Naslund

Reading, he claims, would broaden my experience of the world. The ideas to be found in serious books would deepen my thinking about every choice I make. — Sena Jeter Naslund

Yet intact Ahab, back from his first voyage, once said of just such a changeable breeze, This contrast is the way of life itself. All playfully, he added, But were I God, then would every day be invariantly good. Then he asked me if he might be the god of my world. — Sena Jeter Naslund

I spiraled slowly down the steps, the soft way a milkweed seed sometimes twirls to earth. I wanted time for any vague thought to come to mind that mind should want. No new ones came, but the pace seemed a meditative winding, and what I was winding was like yarn on an oblong skein, softly enfolding a quiet center that was myself. — Sena Jeter Naslund

S IS THE SOUND of the sea. Her surge and suck, her spray and surf. Sometimes she seethes. She knows the sound of smooth. With her s, the sea marries the shore, and then there is scamper and slush in the sand. With curling s's the sea rises to stroke the side of her superior, the sky, who loves and meets her in the s of spray, spawned in liquid and air. — Sena Jeter Naslund

I opened my letter to Margaret by describing the scene - I always enjoy receiving a letter when the writer locates himself or herself in a definite place, and I like to know if there is a cup of tea at hand, or how the light is falling in the room or beyond the window. Such descriptions transcend the barriers of time and space and give reader and writer the illusion that they are together. — Sena Jeter Naslund

She sat still, I thought, and yet she traveled. And when one stitches, the mind travels, not the way men do, with ax and oxen through the wilderness, but surely our traveling counted too, as motion. And I thought of the patience of the stitches. Writing a book, I thought, which men often do, but women only rarely, has the posture of sewing. One hand leads, and the other hand helps. And books, like quilts, are made, one word at a time, one stitch at a time. — Sena Jeter Naslund

You are my Easter. — Sena Jeter Naslund

Mortality is a cause for humility, she said to me. None of us knows when he might be taken, as your blessed father was taken. Death, like birth, comes to us all, regardless of rank or station in life. — Sena Jeter Naslund

I'm sorry to burden you,' she said. She felt like a crybaby.
'What can we do with our stories,' he said, 'but tell them? — Sena Jeter Naslund

Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White is remarkable for its truth-telling about two important issues concerning Alabama's past and present: the civil rights movement and immigration. These stories, rendered through the words and eyes of a young Latina girl who came from Argentina to Marion, Alabama, are made vivid and immediate through Weaver's highly accessible drawings and dialogue. This is a book-about maturation, family, education, and social change-every schoolchild, parent, and citizen should experience. — Sena Jeter Naslund

Where we choose to be, where we choose to be
we have the power to determine that in our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being. — Sena Jeter Naslund

Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last — Sena Jeter Naslund

If you remembered somebody was as real as yourself, how could you kill anybody? — Sena Jeter Naslund

Of our pasts we seemed to know all we needed to know. Nothing was concealed, and though nothing was overtly revealed, all was known. In guilt and in forgiveness we counted ourselves equals, and always had. The sun himself envied us. — Sena Jeter Naslund

Is it not the case that many a life journey starts out in the opposite direction to its destiny? — Sena Jeter Naslund

But I marry myself. I take my fate as within. — Sena Jeter Naslund

Is beauty enhanced or adulterated by utility?
— Sena Jeter Naslund

(Describing a whale killed during Una's maiden voyage) ... He was nearly twice the size of my sixty-barrel whale. Could the animal really be stowed below as small casks of oil? At your own death, I asked myself, can the vastness of your own experience be buried in the ground, funneled into nothing but the shape of a grave? — Sena Jeter Naslund

Do you think yourself a string too short to save? Do you think that you are lank and straight, a linear bit with no connection fore or aft? Fear not your insignificance. Nature has a drawer for you. Yes, nature garners all the string too short to save, and mice visit that drawer. Here's nesting material! Yes, you will be interwoven, be it now or later. — Sena Jeter Naslund

That night, though I was weary with the day, I took to the roof again ... My fingertips rested lightly on the wooden rail. I could not know if stars were equal to each other, but if they were, then the dim ones must be far and farther away, and toward those reaches I hurled my soul. — Sena Jeter Naslund

Her eys were as green as the sea, and forever I forgave the sea for not appearing blue. — Sena Jeter Naslund

I turned from my window. Suddenly it seemed odd for my neighbors on both sides to have visitors while I had none. For the first time, I felt lonely at 'Sconset.
"Let's cook," Frannie said energetically. "We will smell so good that they'll all come running." She picked up a bowl, filled it with apples from the barrel, and immediately began to cut them up. I put water to boil, got out cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, lard, flour, sugar, salt, saleratus, vinegar, and all the other things for apple pies. We both laughed happily. How easy it is, we thought, to make a decision, to implement a remedy, to act. — Sena Jeter Naslund

It was in her nature to love and to nurture; she would not leave those feelings within herself to fester and sour, but instead she chose someone who would receive her gifts gladly. She did not hold herself to be so special that only one special person could she find satisfactory. — Sena Jeter Naslund

What is humor?' one of their professors had posed, and he had answered, 'nondangerous, unexpectedly inappropriate juxtaposition. — Sena Jeter Naslund

Perhaps Vulnerability was a land that, for some people, could never be entirely traversed. — Sena Jeter Naslund

Phoebe asked me, "Tell me, what do you think of the afterlife?"
I was a bit nonplussed. I had no idea what she thought, but I knew that the question must be of greater interest to someone of her age than to me. But our conversation had been completely honest, and before I could speak, honesty and tact had joined hands in my answer. "I have no faith at all," I said, "but sometimes I have hope."
I rather think," she replied, "that total annihilation is the most comfortable position."
I was shaken. The horse clopped on. The children laughed behind us.
When I die," she said, "I don't expect to see any of my loved ones again. I'll just become a part of all this." She waved her hand at the surrounding countryside. "That's all right with me. — Sena Jeter Naslund

admiration was closed to love. — Sena Jeter Naslund

Time is something of an enemy" she opined, "for us mortals. And yet I love it" - she fluttered her fingers in the air - "I love this moment, and it's a child of time. — Sena Jeter Naslund

She seemed imprisoned in her sadness. — Sena Jeter Naslund

If you meet a woman of whatever complexion who sails her life with strength and grace and assurance, talk to her! And what you will find is that there has been a suffering, that at some time she has left herself for hanging dead. — Sena Jeter Naslund

Great minds may have cold hearts. Form but no color. It is an incompleteness. And so they are afraid of any woman who both thinks and feels deeply. — Sena Jeter Naslund