Best Line

It seems that in most books I read, one line, one phrase, one section will stand out for me. It's the line that makes me pause the longest, reread the most times, or reflect for days afterward.

Don't get me wrong, in the best books, this happens repeatedly. But still. There's always that one line.

In Sonja Livingston's Ghostbread, which I just finished reading this morning, the line that most spoke to me didn't reveal itself until the very last page.

Ghostbread is Livingston's memoir of growing up in poverty in western New York. In her epilogue, relating how coincidence and circumstance helped her move on from that life -- and how her nieces, nephews, siblings remain in it -- she writes:

“…there is no rope strong enough to pull someone from one life to another. And perhaps it is arrogance to try” (239).

And now I'm going to think on that some more.