Best Of Kyo Maclear's "Unearthing"

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets by Kyo Maclear

Something about the way he nods stays with her. “Some people underestimate how erotic it is to be understood,” writes Mary Rakow.

p.112

Only years later did I discover: we don’t get to choose how we will become unmoored. Or “overwrought.” That’s the horror of it.

p.138

What is a heart? My mother accuses me of not speaking my mother tongue but I know that in Japanese, there are three words for “heart”: shinzou, which refers to the physical organ; ha-to, which is the anglicized word for a love heart; and kokoro, which means your metaphysical heart and soul.

What is a heart but a broken masterwork pieced together from desire, envy, regret, nostalgia, pity, tenderness and hope? What is a heart but a way of muscling your way onward? What is a heart but a fist?

p.140

[…] There is a brand of softness that is lethal and not in the slightest way meek; I have observed the softest people roar ferociously in the face of dubious and destructive ideas. It is a softness filled with pliancy and a desire to protect a space for anger and argument even as we get deeper in with one another […] It is a softness that sees openness and vulnerability as ways of staying human in a hostile environment — because to be soft in an unyielding world is to resist incorporation and the harsh trudge of capital.

p.141

“[…] because when we are too hard, we slowly bruise ourselves. From the inside.”

p.142

Neither one of my parents finished high school. There were obvious downsides, but one result is that they discovered the movement of their minds without thought of permission, without an eye on a good grade. From them, I should have known: knowledge is a beautiful sideways and sometimes upward spiral, but a tower of appeasement will not feed you. Merit badges will teach compliance with present paths but will not teach pathfinding.

p.166

There are old arts of inquiring “that are courteous and delicate and don’t demand information but instead search for it.” [Robin Wall Kimmerer] Instead of approaching the world with prosecutorial zeal, the trick is to move circuitously. Instead of trying to make our way toward something, through something, we go to the ground, with delicacy and restraint, and listen.

p.176