Human lives are not pieces of string

Claire web art
I shall start at the beginning.
Though of course the beginning is never where you think it is.
Our lives are so important to us that we tend to think the story of them
begins with our birth.
First there was nothing, then I was born . . .
Yet that is not so.
Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out
from a knot of others and laid out straight.
Families are webs.
Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating.
Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole.

~Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale

Pictured above: Claire’s string art

About Ann Laemmlen Lewis

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2 Responses to Human lives are not pieces of string

  1. Jan says:

    Clair that string art is incredible!

  2. Ann, thank you for emailing the link to this post! I appreciate the emails, even after your FH class was finished….they keep family history in the forefront of my mind so I’m more motivated to keep doing it!

    I also read The Thirteenth Tale a couple of years ago and thought I might pick it for my book club when it’s my turn! Very excellent quote!

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