Brunonia Barry Quotes

• “There is lace in every living thing: the bare branches of winter, the patterns of clouds, the surface of water as it ripples in the breeze.... Even a wild dog's matted fur shows a lacy pattern if you look at it closely enough.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “I'll pit my God against your god any day, I say to the Calvinists. It's not their god I'm praying to.... The God I'm praying to is neither male nor female. My God is the one who exists apart from all of men's agendas, the God who takes you away when there is no possible place you can go.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “I realize the selfishness of children. We love them, and we revolve around their universe, but they don't revolve around ours.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “If you had done your calculations properly, there would be a moment when you found that the star you were looking for was exactly where it should be on the horizon. In that instant the universe made sense, and you knew no matter what else happened in the world, the stars would always tell you where you were, and when they did, you would always be able to find your way home.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “Tell me what you want, and I'll tell you who you think you are. Tell me what you fear, and I'll tell you who you really are.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “We all find means of anesthesia.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “Nevertheless . . was a word, certainly, but much more than a word, it was a concept. "Nevertheless" was what you said when you were not going to budge, whether expressing an opinion or an intention. It was a statement, not a question, and the only word in the English language to which it was pointless to respond. If you wanted to end a conversation or an argument "nevertheless" was your word.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “I am a cypher...I carry no weight, no worth, no influence. I represent nothing. I do not exist.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “There is no wrong answer. Even so, it is easy to receive wrong results, simply by asking the wrong question.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “All forgiveness is self-forgiveness. That’s what he says. But I do not yet know how to forgive. Or who, in the end, really needs to be forgiven.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “... once you start demonizing groups of people, when you make them the other, you can justify doing just about anything you want to the, can't you? Look at history if you don't believe me.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “I like soup, do you like soup?”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “The tree is a mediator between the living and dead. Where a limb is malformed, where her branches twist and wave into one another, or where a wound on bark remains unhealed, all these imperfections are sacred pathways between the realms.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “In the realm between life and death, time, as we know it, does not exist.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “You know who you are. You have always been other.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “My name is Towner Whitney. No, that's not exactly true. My real first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time.
  
  I am a crazy woman... That last part is true.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “My God is the one who exists apart from all of men’s agendas, the God who takes you away when there is no possible place you can go.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “The same way they celebrate the witches, who never existed at all in the days of the witch trials but who thrive here in great numbers now.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “All forgiveness is self-forgiveness”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “May’s haircuts were Marblehead’s version of a magic show. The townie kids used to form lines up and down Front Street to watch as Mr. Dooling pulled the rattail comb through my mother’s hair. With each pull, the comb would snag on something, then stop. As he reached into the mass to unwind the tangle, he would find and remove everything from sea glass to shells to smooth stones. In one particularly matted tangle, he found a sea horse. Once he even found a postcard sent from Tahiti to someone in Beverly Farms.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “There is lace in every living thing: the bare branches of winter, the patterns of clouds, the surface of water as it ripples in the breeze…. Even a wild dog’s matted fur shows a lacy pattern if you look at it closely enough.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “...Eva is renowned as both Boston Brahmin and Salem witch when , really, she is neither. Actually, Eva is an old-school Unitarian with Transcendentalist tendencies....
  Yet in recent years Eva has spoken only in cliches, as if use of the tired metaphor can somehow remove her from the inevitable outcomes she is paid to predict.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “tricks to avoid the shyness that descends on children during such events. “Keep asking questions,” she advised. “It gets the conversation going and keeps the focus off you. Find out what they’re interested in and what their preferences are. Offer something of yourself in the question; it’s more intimate that way. For example, appropriate dinner conversation might be to turn to the person next to you and say, ‘I like soup. Do you like soup?”

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• “One of the secrets of good manners is learning to listen.”

  Brunonia Barry

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• “The song of the banshee varies with the listener. The dying hear the music of the spheres. Those left behind hear something else entirely.”

  Brunonia Barry

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