The Berry Pickers Quotes

“I found it strange that no word exists for a parent who loses a child. If children lose their parents, they are orphans. If a husband loses his wife, he’s a widower. But there’s no word for a parent who loses a child. I’ve come to believe that the event is just too big, too monstrous, too overwhelming for words. No word could ever describe the feeling, so we leave it unsaid.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Anger is exhausting. Holding on to it will drain the life out of you.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“When you’re an only child, semi-imprisoned, books become more than paper between hard cardboard, more than the alphabet organized into words and printed on a page.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Hope is such a wonderful thing until it isn’t.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“It’s funny what you remember when something goes wrong.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“THE DASH SADDENS ME. THE SIMPLICITY MISSES SO much. It doesn’t allow for all the downs that bring a person low or the joys that lift them up. All the bends and turns that make up a lifetime are flattened and erased. The dash on a tombstone is wholly inadequate. Everything around it is more remarkable. The name, etched in cursive or dignified fonts. Sometimes a photo is carved into the grey granite, giving life to the dead. Yet the dash, that line that carries the entire sum of a life within it, is unremarkable.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Time quickens the older you get, as if the universe is trying to push you toward the finish line, to make room for the younger, the stronger, to mark your brief place in history and move on.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Alice once said that anger and sadness are just two different sides of the same coin.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“I don’t have time for regret, or the emotional strength it requires. I see the world unfolding as it is meant to. Sometimes I have trouble finding meaning in the things that happen to me, but I assume that the universe knows what it’s doing.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Every one of us alive today comes from something bad done to the family that came before us. You being alive is a goddamn miracle, so no more talk about sour blood. Own your mistakes, make amends and move on. We owe that to those who didn’t make it.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Let those tears flow. Alice always said that holding in tears is like holding in pee—it’s gonna hurt eventually, so you might as well let them go as soon as you feel them.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Own your mistakes, make amends and move on.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“The need for conformity and for the attention of others can lead to a life of misery.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“A scent can bypass logic, can circumvent time.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“That’s why I found it strange that no word exists for a parent who loses a child. If children lose their parents, they are orphans. If a husband loses his wife, he’s a widower. But there’s no word for a parent who loses a child. I’ve come to believe that the event is just too big, too monstrous, too overwhelming for words. No word could ever describe the feeling, so we leave it unsaid.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Secrets and lies can take on a life of their own, they can be twisted and manipulated, or they can burst into the world from the mouth of someone just as they are starting to lose their mind.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Even people who exude light and happiness have dark secrets. Sometimes, the lie becomes so entrenched it becomes the truth, hidden away in the deep recesses of the mind until death erases it, leaving the world a little different. Secrets and lies can take on a life of their own, they can be twisted and manipulated, or they can burst into the world from the mouth of someone just as they are starting to lose their mind.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Somewhere in the echo of time, the universe had decided that happiness of a certain kind was not to be mine. I would have to find joy elsewhere.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“let the living speak. They have longer to atone for it.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Fate is a trickster. He likes to set up all the clues just to see if you can put them together and make sense of the things you never thought to make sense of in the first place.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Words are powerful and funny things, said or unsaid.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“There was love in that house, but none of us really knew what to do with it.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“I've found that money rarely helps with the things that are most important.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Until the day I die, and that isn’t too far away anymore, I will remember the sound of all those voices yelling Ruthie’s name.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Desiree and I became friends. We bonded over our shared love of quiet and solitude. We spent time together without a lot of chit-chat and noise. I never asked what led her to appreciate the quiet and she never asked me; it just worked for us. We were quiet without being alone.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“wasn’t loud, but the sound was amplified by my knowing I was doing something I shouldn’t. I looked down into the drawer. Empty. There was nothing in it except for a few paper clips and dust. All those photos were gone. I sat staring into the empty drawer, then closed it quietly when I heard her heels on the floor above me. I was halfway up the stairs before I remembered what I had gone down for. I found a large piece of ash and tossed it into the furnace.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Over the decades, the walls of this house have been torn down and built again in different places and painted in different colours, but a closet still holds a very old pair of girl’s boots with the head of a doll sticking out of one of them on the top shelf,”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Don’t, Mae. You don’t know what it’s like to lose a child. And I pray you don’t ever find out. Her boots are staying there until I say they aren’t.” Over the decades, the walls of this house have been torn down and built again in different places and painted in different colours, but a closet still holds a very old pair of girl’s boots with the head of a doll sticking out of one of them on the top shelf,”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“You like to find fault with everyone but your own self.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Maybe you have bad luck, but there is nothing sour in us. We’ve been through shit, remember. Every one of us alive today comes from something bad done to the family that came before us. You being alive is a goddamn miracle, so no more talk about sour blood. Own your mistakes, make amends and move on. We owe that to those who didn’t make it.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers