Sarah, Plain and Tall Quotes

"Did Mama sing every day?" asked Caleb. "Every-single-day?" He sat close to the fire, his chin in his hand. It was dusk, and the dogs lay beside him on the warm hearthstones. (1.1)

I looked at the long dirt road that crawled across the plains, remembering the morning that Mama had died, cruel and sunny. They had come for her in a wagon and taken her away to be buried. And the...

My father did not see her look, but I did. And I knew that Caleb had seen it too. Sarah was not smiling. Sarah was already lonely. (3.45)

"You are loud and pesky," I told him. But I was worried, too. Sarah loved the sea. I could tell. Maybe she wouldn't leave there after all to come where there were fields and grass and sky and not m...

It was hard to think of Caleb as beautiful. It took three whole days for me to love him, sitting in the chair by the fire, Papa washing up the supper dishes, Caleb's tiny hand brushing my cheek. an...

"You don't sing anymore," he said. He said it harshly. Not because he meant to, but because he had been thinking of it for so long. "Why?" he asked more gently. (1.36)

Papa might not have told us about Sarah that night if Caleb hadn't asked him the question. After the dishes were cleared and washed and Papa was filling the tin pail with ashes, Caleb spoke up. (1....

My favorite colors are the colors of the sea, blue and gray and green, depending on the weather. My brother William is a fisherman, and he tells me that when he is in the middle of a fog-bound sea...

Matthew, our neighbor to the south, had written to ask for a wife and mother for his children. And Maggie had come from Tennessee. Her hair was the color of turnips and she laughed. (1.47)

"Maybe," he said, his voice low, "if you remember the songs, then I might remember her, too." My eyes widened and tears came. Then the door opened and wind blew in with Papa, and I went to stir the...