Top 75 Nancy E. Turner Quotes
#1. Mama said it's probably because of Suzanne, and that you are never the same after a child dies. That made me wonder what she was like before Clover died, because I don't think I really knew my own mother until I had children, and if she was different before, I don't remember.
Nancy E. Turner
#2. I used to complain to myself that life was so boring, that there was too much laundry to do, too many noses to wipe. Now there are not enough noses to wipe.
Nancy E. Turner
#3. I am not sorry, but this has hurt my heart and spirit more than all the other trials, for being forsaken is worse than being killed. (Sept 5, 1881)
Nancy E. Turner
#4. It is a hard thing to let your children near danger, and yet, I remember my Papa teaching me to fire a rifle before I could even hold it with my own strength. And if he hadn't trusted me to be careful, I would have never had faith in myself to do it.
Nancy E. Turner
#5. I told Mama and Savannah about Ruben's proposal. That got us to talking about marriage and we laughed and cried some, and missed Papa, and it felt good to belong to each other. I don't feel as lonely today as I have in months. At least I know there are other women around me.
Nancy E. Turner
#6. Goats are naught but bones and bleating, and their hair was not warm nor their bodies soft. Of course, there was the smell, too, bitter as overripe vinegar, intrusive as bile.
Nancy E. Turner
#7. How is it possible for me to feel so young and so old at the same time?
Nancy E. Turner
#8. [Children] just cannot be sad too long, it is not in them, as children mourn in little bits here and there like patchwork in their lives.
Nancy E. Turner
#9. It's easy to act honorable when things are coming along and all your pastures are green.Sarah Agnes Prine
Nancy E. Turner
#10. One thing I know from living with Jack is that war, any war, stains a man deep, and nothing can get the stain out. They can wear clothes like a rancher or a banker, but the stains are under there, never far from the surface of their skin.
Nancy E. Turner
#11. Want to wear scarlet velvet and slippers and lace gloves and ride in a stage instead of wearing calluses on my hands driving a team like a man. It is not her fault. She is right. The Lord looks on the inside, although people look on the outside. That man is measuring cloth
Nancy E. Turner
#12. A woman is a fool that lives from penny to farthing and n'er looks to the possibility of loss.
Nancy E. Turner
#13. Sarah, he says, it isn't like I'm some old codger you have to coddle. Well, I told him, I want you healthy, to be sure that someday you are.
Nancy E. Turner
#15. It is strange to have this little girl who is my own flesh and blood and yet she seems so separate from me.
Nancy E. Turner
#16. Never forget, either of you, that there is always something greater than yourselves at work in the world. Look for it. Seek the whole truth, rather than letting the wind blow you as it will.
Nancy E. Turner
#17. It's not fair, men get to go off and chase around the country and get medals for doing stupid things and women get to sit home and worry.
Nancy E. Turner
#19. I wish the Lord would just knock me over with kindness and goodness and simple purity, because I don't seem to be getting the knack of it on my own.
Nancy E. Turner
#21. A nice girl should never go anywhere without a loaded gun and a big knife." ~ Sarah Agnes Prine
Nancy E. Turner
#23. I am my own tapestry, then, made as I could for myself. Some holes in my fabric have been made by others, some torn by chance. Missing threads in the weave represent all those I have loved who died so long before me
Nancy E. Turner
#24. You cannot apologize for my feelings. You may apologize for your actions
Nancy E. Turner
#25. Oh Papa. I always felt like I had a hold on things when there was Papa to turn to.
Nancy E. Turner
#26. A lad who wears his every thought upon his face is asking for someone to change his opinions.
Nancy E. Turner
#27. I dream of land, cut only where streams glistened with birdsong wander through quiet hills burnt hard by the scrape of wind, and of a porch from which a single road leads only homeward.
Nancy E. Turner
#28. Reckon women don't think like men." "Why on earth don't they learn how?" I rubbed my face. "Ain't meant to, honey." I smiled and kissed his brow. "It occurs to us to ask the same thing. Keeps the world turning, I suspect.
Nancy E. Turner
#29. But Jack, you're just a Captain and I'm the General. I order you not to go.
He tried to smile, ... These orders, he whispered, come from the Commander in Chief.
Nancy E. Turner
#30. It seems to me that any time there are men making a war, somewhere there are women and children at home waiting and worrying.
Nancy E. Turner
#31. It seems as if I can only thing if I write my journal, it just connects the part of my head that is busy doing things with the part that is busy thinking about everything else. I know all these pepole are so busy because they love each other and me. We are a noisy crowd of love
Nancy E. Turner
#32. Education doesn't keep a person from being a fool, and the lack of it doesn't keep a person from being intelligent.
Nancy E. Turner
#33. How fragile our lives are anyway. How quickly things can change forever.
Nancy E. Turner
#34. In my head I remember that day the Indian man came and hollered at our camp and hadn't hurt anyone yet and I think that he was trying to say something, but no one will lift their eyes when I speak so I don't say anything.
Nancy E. Turner
#35. Why should being quiet mean you're in love?
Because, she said. That means you aren't nervous with each other, or affected, or likely to be hiding intentions behind too much conversation. A friendly silence can speak between two who will walk together a long way, she said.
Nancy E. Turner
#36. I said, Well, looks like he's pretty ornery. I wonder where he gets it?
Jack just shrugged and kissed my cheek, and then whispered in my ear, He gets it from his mother.
Nancy E. Turner
#37. The best thing a girl can be is a good wife and mother. It is a girl's highest calling. I hope I am ready.
Nancy E. Turner
#38. Hard work is still peace compared to what can worry a person on the inside.
Nancy E. Turner
#39. Home at last, and my little ranch house looks mighty plain, but it is home to me and I am glad to see it.
Nancy E. Turner
#40. A woman who dreams of a good home with a man who holds for her only a poor love is putting a $50 saddle on a $20 horse. She'd be far better off single than riding with him.
Nancy E. Turner
#42. Blue Horse said to me ... wisdom is not a path, it is a tree.
Nancy E. Turner
#43. We named her Dorothy Ann. Dolly, for short. I kissed her warily, fearful of the pain of loving her, love her, though love her I did; fearful lest she hurt me by dying.
Nancy E. Turner
#44. I make believe all my dear ones are not gone, just out of my line of sight beyond some curtain or cluster of people, or tree
Nancy E. Turner
#48. Low down dirty ornery rotten skunk of a cussed mule-headed soldier! What's he want with my book anyway? And what kind of a way is that to write a congratulations? I am so mad I could walk clear to that fort and take him on single handed.
Nancy E. Turner
#49. Getting out of bed is a good way to leave your troubles behind.
Nancy E. Turner
#50. We move on like stone statues. I feel like my legs are made of wooden branches and my heart is a hard rock inside. For days I do not even tie up my hair and it flows around me like an Indian's. I can't find my bonnet and my traveling clothes are ragged and so is my soul.
Nancy E. Turner
#51. Some people sense is wasted on and that's purely a fact.
Nancy E. Turner
#52. That man makes me feel like I have my bonnet on backwards.
Nancy E. Turner
#53. One thing I'd learned from all the burying I'd attended was that sometimes it's hard to pay attention. Burying someone you know will set your mind down some distant trail, as the one you're really on is too painful to view.
at the burial of Ernest, Sarah's brother
p177
Nancy E. Turner
#54. And he likes to torment me, and laughs when I get upset when he does. No, of course not. I do not love Jack Elliot. He is low and coarse and a soldier, and not the kind of man I want to spend my life with.
Nancy E. Turner
#55. I can hardly wait to read it all. But it seems I don't have three minutes to rub together. Some time soon I will take it on, maybe when Charlie is a few months older.
Nancy E. Turner
#56. Don't leave me, Jack, I said.
Not ever, he whispered back.
Nancy E. Turner
#57. Udell was an ordinary man, I thought, but a man with an extraordinary way of thinking. That was truly worth more than gold: extraordinary thinking.
Nancy E. Turner
#58. I must think about something else for a while. But then I remember his warn arms and his big strong legs touching mine and how hard and wide his chest was and how hot his kiss was, and I got outside and feed the chickens. They are getting mighty fat.
Nancy E. Turner
#59. I think my Mama and Savannah must be special people in the Lord's eyes, as they have gone about doing generous and loving things without even a second thought. For me, it seems like the only thing that comes natural is aggravation and hard word
Nancy E. Turner
#60. My life feels like a book left out on the porch, and the wind blows the pages faster and faster, turning always toward a new chapter faster than I can stop to read it.
Nancy E. Turner
#61. It is not a lonely feeling, but just as I am always sad to close the cover on a book, I feel I have finished with this part of my life and will have to begin a new book.
Nancy E. Turner
#62. I can see being angry with folks. Shoot, I'd about hang Chess on the laundry line any day of the week, but I don't shun him. Shunning's no way to get over and done with your fussing. It just drives in a sword that won't come out unless the person holding it pulls first.
Nancy E. Turner
#63. I declare, it is like some other part of me made up some rules about happiness and I just went along with them without thinking. My heart is lightened so much that I am amazed at how sad I felt for so long.
Nancy E. Turner
#64. I wondered someday if the devil might wake up and see he got the wrong girl, what will happen then?
Nancy E. Turner
#65. Maybe part of passing that test was a marker for where I've been, but it feels more like a pointer for something I'll never reach
Nancy E. Turner
#66. I rode toward Rudolfo Maldonado's house, planning to murder him before he got his morning shave.
Nancy E. Turner
#67. A move is a way of lightening your load and starting things new.
Nancy E. Turner
#68. What a pure blessing it was to have a bath in a tub alone in a room where all you had to do was pump the water, not tote buckets. Then all you had to do was pull out the cork, not tote more buckets to the back porch
that kind of thing is easy to take lightly until you don't have it.
Nancy E. Turner
#69. I thought I was leading them, but the truth was, I was just following them, holding up a lantern.
Nancy E. Turner
#70. At times, it's better to think of exactly what is happening right in front of you every second, rather than going through things from the past in your mind.
Nancy E. Turner
#71. We'll I'd like to see the woman that wouldn't defend her kin any way possible, and see what she's made of. Anyone who hasn't got some backbone has no business trying to live in the Territories.
Nancy E. Turner
#72. One thing I know, whispered Savannah, is that if he was quiet, and you were quiet, and neither of you minded it, then you are in love.
Nancy E. Turner
#73. Was he he handsome?" she asked with a sly smirk.
"Very. He is still, I think."
"The devil, they say, goes about in finery."
"And if you believe Beelzebub is as cunning as he is attractive, then I think we have found him.
Nancy E. Turner
#75. He plunges into the middle of them and it is a frightening thing. He must be fierce and wicked and brave all at the same time. I'm glad he's on our side.
Nancy E. Turner
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