52 Quotes by Monica Hesse

It ended. Of course it did, it finally did, and like a lot of things, by the time it actually ended, people were starting to become a little less aware of the fact that it was still going on at all.

None of these are the miracles I was looking for. But they’re miracles nonetheless.

Then you know. You know what it’s like to love someone like you love yourself and lose them.

I would care that someone understood we were flawed and scarred and doing the best we could in this war. We were wrapped up in things that were so much bigger than ourselves. We didn’t know. We didn’t mean to. It wasn’t our fault.

This was not the story of Accomack. This was the story of America. In 1910, back in the peak of the Eastern Shore’s wealth, more than 70 percent of Americans lived in rural counties. It was the norm, it was the standard. Now, rural counties contained only 15 percent of the nation’s population.

We were wrapped up in things that were so much bigger than ourselves. We didn’t know. We didn’t mean it. It wasn’t our fault.

As economies change, as landscapes change, nostalgia is the only good America will never stop producing. We gorge on it ourselves and pass it down to generations.

But I supposed love doesn’t stop, even in wars.

It is the greatest tragedy and the greatest beauty of a relationship: that at some level, the person you are closest to will always be a total friggin’ mystery.