Loretta Marion

“An author has to fit into the skin of her characters, to imagine being trapped by unfortunate and sometimes violent circumstances she herself has never experienced. Consequently, I think fiction writers become more empathetic beings from being forced to see the world through the eyes of the disparate characters we create.”
― Loretta H. Marion, The Fool's Truth

“I found the woman's rapt expression disconcerting as she carried Gabriella to the second floor bedroom and gently placed her under the worn but downy soft quilts. But what was most disturbing was the sound of the door being locked from the outside after Rebekah left the room. I flipped open my phone for reassurance but didn't find it there. The farm was obviously beyond cell tower range. I tried to calm fears by reminding myself that we were in fact the strangers in this situation.”
― Loretta Marion

“Everything comes down to time in the end - to the passing of time, to changing. Ever thought of that? Anything that makes you happy or sad, isn't it all based on minutes going by? Isn't happiness expecting something time is going to bring you? Isn't sadness wishing time back again? Even big things - even mourning a death: aren't you really just wishing to have the time back when that person was alive? Or photos - ever notice old photographs? How wistful they make you feel? Long-ago people smiling, a child who would be an old lady now, a cat that died, a flowering plant that's long since withered away and the pot itself broken or misplaced...Isn't it just that time for once is stopped that makes you wistful? If only you could turn it back again, you think. If only you could change this or that, undo what you have done, if only you could roll the minutes the other way, for once.”
― Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

“Later, she would reflect on the fact, and wonder if there was something wrong with her that, even when her heart was breaking, a small part of her stood outside the emotional truth of the moment, taking notes. Later still, when she'd become better acquainted with Graham Greene, she would realize it was merely the splinter of ice that all writers hold in their hearts.

She reached slowly into her pocket to stroke her notebook. Thinking, thinking...

She stood quickly as a spark of animation fired her from within. Her breaths had quickened and her head was swimming with shimmery threads of ideas that needed braiding together. She needed to think, to plot.”
― Kate Morton, The Lake House