Books I Like: Where the Crawdads Sing

 

My favorite lines from this book...

Among themselves, doves fight as often as hawks.

When in trouble, just let go. Go back to idle.

His dad had told him many times that the definition of a real man is one who cries without shame, reads poetry with his heart, feels opera in his soul, and does what’s necessary to defend a woman.

Sand keeps secrets better than mud.

But being completely alone was a feeling so vast it echoed.

Ma had said women need one another more than they need men, but she never told her how to get inside the pride.

We made it fun, we laughed. That’s what sisters and girlfriends are all about. Sticking together even in the mud, ’specially in mud.”

Not all words hold that much.

Autumn leaves don’t fall; they fly.

“Nobody’s come close to filling their brains,” he said. “We’re all like giraffes not using their necks to reach the higher leaves.”

“Unworthy boys make a lot of noise,” Ma had said.

Some behaviors that seem harsh to us now ensured the survival of early man in whatever swamp he was in at the time. Without them, we wouldn’t be here. We still store those instincts in our genes, and they express themselves when certain circumstances prevail. Some parts of us will always be what we were, what we had to be to survive—way back yonder.

I guess some things can’t be explained, only forgiven or not.

Let’s face it, a lot of times love doesn’t work out. Yet even when it fails, it connects you to others and, in the end, that is all you have, the connections.

And when you go to trap a fox, it’s usually the trap that gets foxed.

TATE AND KYA HOPED for a family, but a child never came. The disappointment wove them closer together, and they were seldom separated for more than a few hours of any day.