Book quotes...."What We Keep" by Elizabeth Berg

"People always told me I was perceptive....But I didn't want to learn any more about human nature than I knew already....it occurs to me that I did not pursue any profession having to do with psychology because if I understood more about how people work, how they are, I might understand my mother. If I understood her, I might have to forgive her. And at some critical time, I became very much invested in not forgiving her - we all did.

It became an underpinning in our reduced family, a need, even; just as there seems to be a terrible need for family feuds to continue. In a way, it is as if your refusal to forgive is too much a part of you for you to lost it. Who would you be without it? Not yourself. Lost, somehow. Think of how people tend to pick the same chair to sit in over and over again. We are always trying to make sure we know where we are. Though we may long for adventure, we also cherish the familiar. We just do." (page 56 - 57)
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"When my mother returned home from trying on Jasmine's hat, she was flushed and happy. Through the open kitchen window I heard her humming with the radio. "Catch a Falling Star" was playing. I like that song, too, liked the notion of having a pocketful of starlight. I hoped for such a thing, in fact. I believed at the time that starts were five-pointed objects you could hold in your hand, a sort of fancier version of tinfoil variety. I was ignorant to the heat and size and the most astounding fact of all, that some stars I saw were not really there at all." (page 81)
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"I was downstairs, reading."
" Now?" I strained to see her face. She was smiling, it appeared.
"Yes, now," she said. "It's nice, sometimes, to read in the middle of the night. The sky is so dark and soft-looking outside the window, all the stars out. You have just on light on, you know, and it seems to pour onto the page. Makes the book seem better. You are this little island, just up alone with a book. And you heard the night sounds of the house...It's so interesting to me, that sound. Time. The measure of it." (page 103 - 104)
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