A Northern Light Events Quotes

What had I seen? Too much. What did I know? Only that knowledge carries a damned high price. Miss Wilcox, my teacher, had taught me so much. Why had she never taught me that? (1.38)

"You're to stay home and help me boil tomorrow. Your sisters, too.""Pa, I can't. I'll fall behind if I miss a day, and my examinations are coming up.""Cows can't eat learning, Mattie. I need to buy...

"The stories Miss Wilcox sent to New York weren't about kings or musketeers," Weaver said. "That one about the hermit Alvah Dunning and his Christmas all by himself, that was the best story I ever...

Royal gave me a look over his shoulder—a wincing, withering look—that made me feel like the biggest babbling blabberer in all of Herkimer County. I closed my mouth and wondered what it was girl...

Fesole, Valdarno, Vallombrosa… Where in blazes are those places? I wondered. Why couldn't Satan have decided to visit the North Woods? Old Forge, maybe, or even Eagle Bay. Why didn't he talk like...

Forty-five cents was a good deal of money, but I didn't want the ones for fifteen cents, not after I'd seen the others. I had more ideas. Tons of them. For stories and poems. I chewed the inside of...

I would have liked to tell Mr. Palmer just how old and feeble that joke is, but instead I said, "Oh, of course, sir! How clever of you!" because I had learned a thing or two during my time at the G...

I have read so many books, and not one of them tells the truth about babies. Dickens doesn't. Oliver's mother just dies in childbirth and that's that. Bronte doesn't. Catherine Earnshaw just has he...

There was a bill of sale on top of it, and money—a dirty, wrinkled bill. Ten dollars. For twelve gallons of maple syrup. I knew he'd been hoping for twenty.I looked at him then. He looked tired....

"But you can't break a promise to anyone who's dead. They'll come back and haunt you if you do. Why are you asking?"Ada blinks at me with her huge, dark eyes, and even though it's boiling hot in ou...

"You could loan it to me. I'd pay it all back… every penny of it. Please, Aunt Josie?" I spoke those last words in a whisper.My aunt didn't reply right away; she just looked at me in such a way t...

After a while, though, he took a breath, and just to say something, I told him I was going to college. I told him that I had been accepted to Barnard and that if I could only come up with some mone...

Weaver shook me off. He turned around and smiled. A huge, horrible smile. "Why, sure, Mistuh Boss, suh!" he hollered. "I be right along, suh, right along! On de double!""Weaver!" his mother called....

It had been years since Pa worked a drive, but I could tell from the look on his face as my uncle talked that he missed it. He flapped a hand at the stories and tried to seem all disapproving, but...

"She don't need to make something more. She's fine as she is. There ain't a thing wrong with her.""She could be a writer, sir. A real one. A good one.""She's already a writer. She writes stories an...

"This is stealing, Josie," I heard Mrs. Mclntyre say. "We're stealing Emmie Hubbard's mail.""It's not stealing, Alma. It's helping. We're trying to help a neighbor, that's all," my aunt said."Arn S...

"I heard what you said, it just don't make sense. Why do you always want to read about other people's lives, Matt? Ain't your own good enough for you?"I didn't reply to that because I knew my voice...

"I'm sorry, Miss Wilcox," I said, looking at the floor. "I don't mean to be coarse. I just ... I don't know why I should care what happens to people in a drawing room in London or Paris or anywhere...

Emily Baxter's poems made my head hurt. They made me think of so many questions and possibilities. Reading one was like pulling a stump. You got hold of a root and tugged, hoping it would come righ...

My eyes latch on to one line again: "I said no so many times, dear"...and then I gasp out loud, because I have said no a few times myself, dear, and I finally understand why Grace was so upset: She...

"There's to be no more scribbling, no more foolishness. You're to come home and take up your duties and responsibilities. If you do, I promise I will do my best to forget any of this ever happened....

"Look at that stretch of land right there, Matt," he said, sweeping his hand out in front of him. "Nice and flat, well drained, and a good stream besides. Make good growing land. I'd farm it for co...

"Tommy… tell your ma… tell her I'll call on her a bit later, all right? All right, Tom? Here… here are some biscuits. Take them in to her when… when you can."Tommy didn't answer me. His thi...

But myself is not listening. She refuses to listen. She's picking up another letter and another and another, frantically looking for a different answer.She feels sick, so sick she could vomit.Becau...

"Things ain't always what they seem, Mattie. You remember that. Just because a cat has her kittens in the oven, it don't make 'em biscuits." Things are never what they seem, Pa, I thought. I used...

"But it's not right, sir. I shouldn't be called names. Shouldn't catch a beating. Shouldn't have to stay in the kitchen, either.""How old are you, Weaver? Seventeen or seven? Don't you know that wh...

And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, th...

Just then, I saw what Weaver would be, too. I saw him in a courtroom, thundering at the jury, commanding their eyes and ears, their hearts and souls and minds—on fire with the strength of his con...

I had to steady myself against the dresser. I felt like someone had taken my legs out from under me. That's why they'd fought, I thought. That's why Pa had swung the peavey at Lawton and why Lawton...

I lie back against my pillow and spend a long time silently repeating them to myself, over and over and over again like a litany, but it's no use. Mamma said I would know. And I do. I guess I have...

"My husband is on his way, Mattie. My sister wired that he's a day away at most. If I'm still here when he arrives, the next stop for me is a doctor's office. And then a sanatorium and so many drug...

"Thought you were so smart, didn't you, Mattie? You, with your head always shoved in a book. Royal says you know a lot of words, but you don't even know how to please...""Martha, you say one more w...

I saw Frank Loomis's hairy behind in my mind's eye and Emmie bent over the stove. "Royal, you ... you know?""For god's sake, Mattie. Everyone in the whole damn county knows.""I didn't know.""That a...

She turned and ran off toward the lake and Ada and I ran after her, laughing and crowing the whole way. (43.nonpareil.66)

I look down at the bundle in my hands. At the pale blue ribbon. At the loopy handwriting, so like my own.If I burn these letters, who will hear Grace Brown's voice? Who will read her story? (46.13-14)

It was a dreadful thing that he did, and he is not to be admired for it, but right then I felt I understood why he did it. I even felt a little sorry for him. He probably just wanted some company,...

"Why, Matt? Why are you going now?" he asks me.I look at the Glenmore. I can see a light glowing softly in a window in a little bedroom off the parlor. "Because Grace Brown can't," I tell him. (49....