Nancy E. Turner

“It is a hard thing to let your children near danger, and yet, I remember my Papa teaching me to fire a rifle before I could even hold it with my own strength. And if he hadn't trusted me to be careful, I would have never had faith in myself to do it.”

“My life is a tree and I can stay in one place and spread out in all directions, and I can do more learning shading this brood of mine than if I was all alone. I declare, it is like some other part of me made up some rules about happiness and I just went along with them without thinking. My heart is lightened so much that I am amazed at how sad I felt for so long.”

“Why should being quiet mean you're in love?Because, she said. That means you aren't nervous with each other, or affected, or likely to be hiding intentions behind too much conversation. A friendly silence can speak between two who will walk together a long way, she said.”

“They were just little families cooking beans and planting and hunting a deer now and then, and having babies and laying their old folks to rest, not harming anyone, just living...I know that Indians aren't no dirtier than any white folks and cleaner than some. Not stupid, either. But I saved my breath. The likes of her isn't going to listen nor be changed in the mind just from hearing sense. Some people sense is wasted on and that's purely a fact.”

“He plunges into the middle of them and it is a frightening thing. He must be fierce and wicked and brave all at the same time. I'm glad he's on our side.”

“Education doesn't keep a person from being a fool, and the lack of it doesn't keep a person from being intelligent.”

“It's not fair, men get to go off and chase around the country and get medals for doing stupid things and women get to sit home and worry.”

“One thing I know, whispered Savannah, is that if he was quiet, and you were quiet, and neither of you minded it, then you are in love.”

“But there is no easy way to mourn a child.”

“One thing I'd learned from all the burying I'd attended was that sometimes it's hard to pay attention. Burying someone you know will set your mind down some distant trail, as the one you're really on is too painful to view.at the burial of Ernest, Sarah's brotherp177”

“hard work is still peace compared to what can worry a person on the inside.”

“Udell was an ordinary man, I thought, but a man with an extraordinary way of thinking. That was truly worth more than gold: extraordinary thinking.”

“It's easy to act honorable when things are coming along and all your pastures are green."Sarah Agnes Prine”

“At times, it's better to think of exactly what is happening right in front of you every second, rather than going through things from the past in your mind.”

“How could I explain to a beautiful lady in a silk dress that when I picked up her baby girl, I felt that lady's long-ago chubby shape in my arms, smelled her sunshine-touched hair? That years and years of tiny memories flitted past my heart like a flock of birds spinning on invisible air? It was the smell of the little girls, slightly wet, somewhat soapy, the smell of porridge supper, and the taste of kissed-away tears. Here in my arms were the best parts of life, going on, blooming like a strong tree.”

“The best cure for sadness is doing something.”

“I wish the Lord would just knock me over with kindness and goodness and simple purity, because I don't seem to be getting the knack of it on my own.”

“Reckon women don't think like men." "Why on earth don't they learn how?" I rubbed my face. "Ain't meant to, honey." I smiled and kissed his brow. "It occurs to us to ask the same thing. Keeps the world turning, I suspect.”

“My life feels like a book left out on the porch, and the wind blows the pages faster and faster, turning always toward a new chapter faster than I can stop to read it.”

“We attended church Sunday as a family, and it was an even balance as to who was harder to keep still, the four Elliot children or Captain Elliot himself. Jack kept up a stream of secretive winks at me in a most suggestive fashion, which made me blush despite the fact that I desperately tried to maintain my composure. Two year old Suzanne squirmed in my lap but was still for him, so he bounced her quietly on his knee. The boys, true to their deeply spiritual natures, snored softly through the entire sermon, and April sat still but looked out the windows, bored and restlessly shifting in her seat.”

“I read more of Treasure Island to him, and it pleased him a great deal. It seems to me that there are so many lonely people in this world, and so little of life is kind and good. In a way, I am thankful for this flood, since without it, I might never have talked to him much, and Mason is a nice fellow.”

“Home at last, and my little ranch house looks mighty plain, but it is home to me and I am glad to see it.”

“Taking up marriage is a good excuse for taking up cursing, I think.”

“Mrs. Faulkner had sidled up to me and said Good day, Mrs. Elliot?I just looked at her, and I saw in her eyes that she was wanting some kind of approval for her boy because of his career ahead, and she suddenly just looked like an old lady, not fancy and rich and frightening. An old lady whose son admired my husband, and who herself would be as helpless in the Territories as a newborn calf and not nearly as useful. Good day, I said back. It is a funny thing how much more proud people can be of themselves if they never step back and take a good look in a glass.”

“A woman who dreams of a good home with a man who holds for her only a poor love is putting a $50 saddle on a $20 horse. She'd be far better off single than riding with him.”

“I declare, it is like some other part of me made up some rules about happiness and I just went along with them without thinking. My heart is lightened so much that I am amazed at how sad I felt for so long.”

“How fragile our lives are anyway. How quickly things can change forever.”

“No wonder Mama went away in her head when Clover passed on. And then Papa. I am going to visit my Mama tomorrow and tell her I am sorry for everything I ever did that caused her sorrow or worry, and for ever wishing, during those days, that she would come back. She probably wanted to stay there. It's a wonder she came back at all. If I knew how to make myself go away in my head, I declare I would.”

“I used to complain to myself that life was so boring, that there was too much laundry to do, too many noses to wipe. Now there are not enough noses to wipe.”

“Our children weigh hard on my heart, and thinking about them growing up honest and healthy, or just living to grow up at all, makes a load in my chest that is bigger than the safe at the bank, and more valuable to me than all the gold inside it.”

“Well, he perked right up and said, Five hundred dollars? Mrs. Elliot, I believe we can be of service to you after all."I doubt it, I told him. I made this money with the sweat of my brow and the labor of my hands and I've got the rawhide to prove it. I don't inted to leave it with any man that thinks money is confusing.”

“I can hardly wait to read it all. But it seems I don't have three minutes to rub together. Some time soon I will take it on, maybe when Charlie is a few months older.”

“I said, Well, looks like he's pretty ornery. I wonder where he gets it?"Jack just shrugged and kissed my cheek, and then whispered in my ear, He gets it from his mother.”

“I have been sad almost a whole year, thinking that taking that test was somehow the end of my learning and that not having that as a possibility in my future left a big empty spot in my life that the children and the ranch didn't fill. But my life is not like that, it is a tree, and I can stay in one place and spread out in all directions, and I can do more learning shading this brood of mine than if I was all alone.”

“Blue Horse said to me... wisdom is not a path, it is a tree.”

“It seems there is always a road with bends and forks to choose, and taking one path means you can never take another one. There's no starting over nor undoing the steps I've taken. It isn't like I'd want to not have my little ones and Jack and that ranch, it is part of life to have to support yourself. It's just that I want everything, my insides are not just hungry, but greedy. I want to find out all the things in the world and still have a family and a ranch. Maybe part of passing that test was a marker for where I've been, but it feels more like a pointer for something I'll never reach. (November 29, 1887 entry, pg 309)”

“I have named the star Jack's Star. It is beautiful and bright and gives me joy when it is here and pain when it is not, and every year as Summer approaches I have seen it coming over the hills. I used to think that someday i will learn what educated people have called it and why it is only here sometimes, but now i think it wouldn't matter. It is Jack's Star, and they only have to ask and I will tell them it's name. They will have to ask the star itself where it goes and why it is not content to stay.”

“That man makes me feel like I have my bonnet on backwards.”

“I am not sorry, but this has hurt my heart and spirit more than all the other trials, for being forsaken is worse than being killed. (Sept 5, 1881)”

“Living is getting knocked down time and again, then standing up time and again, and once more. It's easy to act honorable when things are coming along and all your pastures are green. Plenty difficult when the ground is dried and burned and people have connived to take even that from you. I'll sell this place, or I'll lose it. I'll go on. People who don't have hard times aren't living.”

“I have a deep-down belief that there are folks in the world who are good through and through, and others who came in mean and will go out mean. It's like coffee. Once it's roasted, it all looks brown. Until you pour hot water on it and see what comes out. Folks get into hot water, you see what comes out.”

“One thing I know from living with Jack is that war, any war, stains a man deep, and nothing can get the stain out. They can wear clothes like a rancher or a banker, but the stains are under there, never far from the surface of their skin.”

“What a pure blessing it was to have a bath in a tub alone in a room where all you had to do was pump the water, not tote buckets. Then all you had to do was pull out the cork, not tote more buckets to the back porch--that kind of thing is easy to take lightly until you don't have it.”

“A clock only turns one direction”

“Low down dirty ornery rotten skunk of a cussed mule-headed soldier! What's he want with my book anyway? And what kind of a way is that to write a congratulations? I am so mad I could walk clear to that fort and take him on single handed.”

“I am very thankful that man took one look at me showing with a baby coming along, with my hair falling down, and the broom lying at a mound of broken glass, and supper boiling over on the stove, April wearing a dirty pinafore screaming for me to hold her, and just then the baby in my arms spit up all over me, and he said, You know . . .I'd be kindly obliged if you'd let me have supper some other time. ”

“Children are a burden to a mother, but not the way a heavy box is to a mule. Our children weight hard on my heart, and thinking about them growing up honest and healthy, or just living to grow up at all, makes a load in my chest that is bigger than the safe at the bank,and more valuable to me than all the gold inside it.”

“I might like to have someone courting me. But it would have to be someone who is a square shooter and who has a train load of courage. And it would have to be someone who doesn't have to talk down to folks to feel good, or to tell a person they are worthless ifthey just made a mistake. And he'd have to be not too thin. Why, I remember hugging [my brother] Ernest was like warpping your arms around a fence post,and I love Ernest, but I want a man who can hold me down in a wind. Maybe he'd have to be pretty stubborn. I don't have any use for a man that isn't stubborn. Likely a stubborn fellow will stay with you through thick and thin, and a spineless one will take off, or let his heart wander.”

“Oh Papa. I always felt like I had a hold on things when there was Papa to turn to.”

“But Jack, you're just a Captain and I'm the General. I order you not to go. He tried to smile, . . . .These orders, he whispered, come from the Commander in Chief.”