“It is always sad when someone leaves home, unless they are simply going around the corner and will return in a few minutes with ice cream sandwiches.”
“You don’t really know how attached you are until you move away, until you’ve experienced what it means to be dislodged, a cork floating on the ocean of another place.”
“The ducks pecked him, the chickens beat him, and the girl who fed the poultry kicked him with her feet. So at last he ran away, frightening the little birds in the hedge as he flew over the palings.”
″‘We’ll see you soon, though,’ said her other father. ‘When you come back.’
‘Um,’ said Coraline.
‘And then we’ll all be together as one big, happy family,’ said her other mother. ‘For ever and always.‘”
“We shook hands and I watched him walk quickly away, tall, lean, bent forward with eagerness and hungry for the future, his metal capped shoes tapping against the sidewalk. Then he turned into Lee Avenue and was gone.”
″‘She loved you very much.’
‘But she left me,’ I told him.
‘She left us,’ said the preacher softly...‘She packed her bags and left us, and she didn’t leave one thing behind.‘”
“When you’re just ready to shut the door of the taxi and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there’s not a thing left to say in this life, then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name.”
“This is their home. I have tried to make it as fine a place as I could. But the plain fact is they cannot leave, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make them want to.”
“He thought: Peaceful sound. Peaceful place…. He thought: Best of an island is once you get there—you can’t go any farther … you’ve come to the end of things…. He knew, suddenly, that he didn’t want to leave the island.”
“They stared at each other in the flickering light, realized what this meant. There was no tunnel leading out of Ember. The way out was the river. To leave Ember, they must go on the river.”
“So they all went away from the little log house. The shutters were over the windows, so the little house could not see them go. It stayed there inside the log fence, behind the two big oak trees that in the summertime had made green roofs for Mary and Laura to play under. And that was the last of the little house.”
“A stone had been dropped into the well, the well was my youthful soul. And for a very long time this matter of Cain, the fratricide, and the ‘mark’ formed the point of departure for all my attempts at comprehension, my doubts and my criticism.”
“They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist.”
“All my dreams of leaving, but beneath them I was afraid to go. I had clung to them, to Rass, yes, even to my grandmother, afraid that if I loosened my fingers an iota, I would find myself once more cold and clean in a forgotten basket.”
“So they all went away from the little log house. The shutters were over the windows, so the little house could not see them go. It stayed there inside the log fence, behind the two big oak trees that in the summertime had made green roofs for Mary and Laura to play under. And that was the last of the little house.”
The story is told through the alternating point of view of three sisters: Matilda (6), Frances (11) and Elizabeth (15). The events of a mysterious neighbor “who looks like a spy” (according to Matilda) are recounted alongside flashbacks and hardships dealing with their father, a veteran of World War II, who suffers from post-traumatic stress and often leaves his family for lengths of time.
Only a small boy sees them leaving and follows as the babies chase butterflies in trees, frogs in a bog, even bats in a cave, ignoring pleas to come back. But not to worry, our hero saves the day, making sure that all the babies get home safely from their appealing adventures.
Each story speaks wholeness and healing and wonder to the soul. I needed several tissues in each story to wipe away the tears: whether it was over Griffin’s misunderstanding that his baby sister had gone away because he didn’t love her enough or Perry’s mute solitude as he strives to understand why his mother would leave him in a suitcase stolen from a thrift shop and go to heaven without him.
″ ‘We thought you might be thinking of leaving us,” I told her. “Because you miss the sea.”
Sarah smiled.
“No,” she said. “I will always miss my old home, but the truth of it is I would miss you more.’ ”
“It’s called making yourself homeless. And so here I am sitting in this doorway which is now my bedroom, hoping some kind of punter will give me a bit of small change so I can eat.”
“You’re leaving a place you know and heading into the unknown with nothing to protect you. No money. No prospect of work. No address where folks will make you welcome.”
“The very though of never seeing the house on East 88th Street again was grim indeed and too much for him to endure. Signor Valenti read his thought and decided Lyle should have one last look at the house on East 88th Street.”
“The fox was stunned. He stared at Doctor De Soto, then at his wife. They smiled and waited. All he could do was say, ‘Frank oo berry mush’ through his clenched teeth, and get up and leave. He tried to do so with dignity.”
″‘We’ll come back,’ said Papa.
‘I know,’ said Anna. She remembered how she had felt when they had gone back to the Gasthof Zwirn for the holidays and added, ‘But it won’t be the same- we won’t belong. Do you think we’ll ever really belong anywhere?’
‘I suppose not,’ said Papa.”
″‘Do you think we’re going to leave this bath now?’ said Beaver Hateman, going menacingly to to Uncle.
‘Yes, I do!’
‘Well, you’re jolly well wrong! I’m going to stay here all night, if I want to!‘”
“Blindly, instinctively, he turned to the wilderness, like any small desperately hurt animal seeking solitude from its own kind and the dark and a hole to crawl into.”