How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"Sometimes I still have American dreams. I mean literally. I see microwave ovens and exercise machines and grocery-store shelves with thirty brands of shampoo, and I look at these things oddly, in my dream. I stand and I think, 'What is all this for? What is the hunger that drives this need?' I think its fear. Codi, I hope you won't be hurt by this but I don't think I'll ever be going back. I don't think I can." (23.185)
Coming from one of Hallie's last letters, this paragraph is pretty important. One of the reasons that Codi is able to come to terms with Hallie's death is that Hallie dies doing exactly what she wants to be doing and in the process has found her home. That's something Codi can admire, even if Hallie does ignore the undeniable convenience of microwave ovens. Come on, who doesn't like pizza bagels?
Quote #8
I looked at him, surprised. "But then you've lost your house."
"Not if you know how to build another one. All these great pueblos like at Kinishba—people lived in them awhile, and then they'd move on. Just leave them standing. Maybe go to a place with better water, or something."
"I thought they were homebodies."
Loyd rubbed his hand thoughtfully over my palm. Finally he said, "The important thing isn't the house. It's the ability to make it. You carry that in your brain and in your hands, wherever you go. Anglos are like turtles, if they go someplace they have to carry the whole house along in their damn Winnesotas." (19.83)
Here's Loyd's take on the relationship between bacon pans and nests. At first, it seems like he's agreeing with the husbands of Grace, who think that home is where your wife makes your breakfast. If we look a little closer though, we can see that Loyd means that it's relationships, not stuff, that makes a home. And that includes relationships to the land.
Quote #9
"So you, what, ran off to the army. Got yourself educated on the G.I. Bill, and came back here as the mighty prodigal doctor with his beautiful new wife, and acted like nobody could touch you."
I watched him closely, but could read nothing. [...] He poured coffee into two mugs and gave the larger one to me."Thank you," I said.
"You're welcome." (23.75-6)
This is a great moment, just because it compresses so much of Codi and Doc's relationship into one exchange. She gets him pretty thoroughly, but part of getting him is accepting that he's an inscrutable old guy. And Doc is awful. He makes terrible decisions and is so repressed that he's deliberately erased his own past and that of his daughters. But at the same time, he really, really loves the girls, and Kingsolver shows it, overtly in Doc's own portions of the narrative, and subtly in moments like this one, when he gives Codi the larger of the two cups of coffee right in the middle of her ripping him apart.