“I’d open each cage. I’d unlock every pen, let the animals go, and start over again. And, somehow or other, I think I could find some beast of must more un-usual kind.”
“Grandpa found Stina sitting on a rock, crying. ‘I came out to see the storm,’ she said. ‘But I don’t like it.’ Grandpa picked her up and hugged her. ‘Dear child,’ he said, ‘this is no way to see a storm You’re soaking wet and so am I. Let’s go inside and start all over again.’ “
“This was when I learned that you have to give up your life as you know it to get a new one: that sometimes you need to let go of everything you’re clinging to and start over, whether because you’ve outgrown it or because it’s not working anymore, or because it was wrong for you in the first place.”
“This gave him peace and hope, that anything he’d missed out on when he married Rachel so young was still there, waiting. That other people had screwed up and were starting over, too.”
“And, finally, when all the pulling was done, Gertrude, beind her, again had just one...That one little feather she had as a starter. But now that’s enough, because now she is smarter.”