Karen Hesse

“As long as you live, it is never too late to make amends. Take my advice, child. Don't waste your precious life with regrets and sorrow. Find a way to make right what was wrong, and then move on.”

“The schoolhouse, on this sunlit morning, has begun to take on the scent of girls with wind-blown hair, with seeds in their pockets, with road-hardened feet.”

“I don't know what I am thinking. But I am alone. I am trapped in the net of the room. In the net of humans. I think maybe I am drowning in the net of humans.”

“Daddy named me Billie Jo. He wanted a boy. Instead, he got a long legged girl with a wide mouth with cheekbones like bicycle handles. He got a redheaded, freckle faced, narrow-hipped girl with a fondness for apples and hunger for playing fierce piano.”

“Anyway, this time I caught her in the slow stirring of biscuits, her mind on other things, but anyhow, she was distracted enough, I was determined enough,this time I got just what I wanted. Permission to play at the Palace.”

“It almost rained Saturday.The clouds hung low over the farm.The air felt thick.It smelled like rain.In town,the sidewalks got damp, that was all.”

“each day after class lets out,each morning before it begins, i sit at the school piano and make my hands work. in spite of the pain, in spite of the stiffness and scars. i make my hands play piano.i have practiced my best piece over and over till my arms throb.”

“I hear the first drops. Like the tapping of a stranger at the door of a dream, the rain changes everything.”

“Sometimes, a flame can be utterly extinguished. Sometimes, a flame can shrink and waver, but sometimes a flame refuses to go out. It flares up from the faintest ember to illuminate the darkness, to burn in spite of overwhelming odds.”

“And I know now that all the time I was trying to getout of the dust,the fact is,what I am,I am because of the dust.And what I am is good enough.Even for me.”

“I have a hunger,for more than food.I have a hungerbigger than Joyce City.I want tongues to tie, and eyes to shine at melike they do at Mad Dog Craddock.Course they never will,not with my hands all scarred up,looking like the earth itself,all parched and rough and cracking,but if I played right enough,maybe they would see past my hands.Maybe they could feel at ease with me again,and maybe then,I could feel at east with myself.”

“ApplesMa's apple blossomshave turned to hard green balls.To eat them now,so tart,would turn my mouth inside out, would make my stomach groan.But in just a couple months,after the baby is born,those apples will be ready and we'll make piesand sauceand puddingand dumplingsand cakeand cobblerand have just plain apples to take to schooland slice with my pocket knifeand eat one juicy piece at a timeuntil my mouth is cleanand freshand my breath is nothing but apple.June 1934”

“I play songs that have only the pattern of my self in them and you hum along suporting me. You are the companion to myself. The mirror with my mother'e eyes.”

“the way i see it, hard times aren't only about money, or drought, or dust. hard times are about losing spirit, and hope, and what happens when dreams dry up.”