31 Quotes by Amanda Coplin

The narrow bed with its purple, red, and green quilt, the bedside table with its jar of rocks, piled books. The porcelain basin near the window where she washed her face, the pitcher with the brown rose painted on it, the large crack like a vein in the bottom of the basin. The apricot orchard, the buzzing bees like a haze in spring. The barn – the smell of hay and manure, grease, old leather. The sun streaming through the slats. The mule’s nose in her palm.

We do not belong to ourselves alone, she wanted to say, but there was no one to speak to.

And that was the point of children, thought Caroline Middey: to bind us to the earth and to the present, to distract us from death. A distraction dressed as a blessing: but dressed so well, and so truly, that it became a blessing. Or maybe it was the other way around: a blessing first, before a distraction.

How lovely, the portraitist kept saying. How lovely.