5 Quotes by Erin Bartels

A moment of peace, a moment without doubt, a moment I felt that, were I called to, I could walk on water, I could hold back the wind.

In the absence of real society, I made my own out of the imagined people Peter Flynt slid into my locker. They entered like corpses on a slab, but they came to life in my mind with each turn of the page.

There are many types of quiet. The quiet when you first open a book and prepare yourself to enter a story. The quiet of the seed underground, waiting for spring. The quiet that follows the moment the past rips through time to invade the present.

Sad and mad and love are such weak words, drawn long ago from Germanic languages spoken by people who may have been more stone than flesh. The soul needs words rooted in romance languages, words like despondent and ravished and adore.

Peter smiles. 'You can't fight the elements. Wind and water always win. Even against stone. It's why we have the Grand Canyon and the Arches in Utah and Niagara Falls. You can't tame the waves and you can't hold back the wind. You've got to move with it. But that's not to say you have to let it take you wherever it will. Think of a sailboat. The wind moves it, but it's not what steers it. The captain of the ship decides where it will go. You're the captain of your ship.