Karen Fisher

“Our stories are all we have. The only thing that can save us is to learn each other's stories. From beginning to end....For every life we know, we are expanded.”

“Because affection, she had learned, was such a civilized thing, compared to love. It exacted so much less and was therefore more enduring. And endurable.”

“It was a fine country, or would be, different from any she had known. But if it was the promised land, it was not because of the trees or climate, but because, just getting here, they'd found something new inside themselves.”

“We cannot choose, he thought, the people we're born into nor what they teach us. So that opposition exists, and appears to us as evil. It is part of life, and sorrow is its natural consequence.”

“He thought, This country does attract fanatics and torment them.”

“He looked around, saw himself mirrored in that man walking back with his rifle. And suddenly, it seemed possible to him that we might love ourselves the most when we are suffering and seen to suffer. The pursuits of men seemed only the more shocking, if this were true.”

“She looked at him. He saw her tendrils of damp hair. He looked off, but he had never felt this thing so deep before, this need to speak, to say how far he had been swept from what is good, and the sense seemed doubtful and unmanly.”

“The country was so vast, of course, that one or a hundred or a thousand men could have very little effect. And how, anyway, could one fault a people bringing schools and churches and all the goods of industry? Still, there was always something about newcomers laying claim that made him uneasy, as though he were being robbed some way, or made to give over something he had never thought to value.”