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“Used to be when a bird flew into a window, Milly and Twiss got a visit. Milly would put a kettle on and set out whatever culinary adventure she'd gone on that day. For morning arrivals, she offered her famous vanilla drop biscuits and raspberry jam. Twiss would get the medicine bag from the hall closet and sterilize the tools she needed, depending on the seriousness of the injury. A wounded limb was one thing. A wounded crop was another.
People used to come from as far away as Reedsburg and Wilton. Milly would sit with them while Twiss patched up the 'poor old robin' or the 'sweet little meadowlark.' Over the years, the number of visitors had dwindled. Now that the grocery store sold ready-bake biscuits and jelly in all the colors of the rainbow, people didn't bother as much about birds.”
― Rebecca Rasmussen, The Bird Sisters

“Wisconsin,'" Twiss said. "That's my word."
"The word or the state?" Milly said.
"Both," Twiss said.
Twiss knew every dip and rise on their land, every anthill and every snake hole. She knew what kind of grass grew where. You could blindfold her and she'd be able to tell you what kind of bark belonged to what kind of tree. Pines were her favorite; she liked how they looked so different from the other trees n the woods, yet relied on the same underground springs to stay alive. Instead of a cotton-filled pillow like the rest of the family slept on, Twiss slept on a pillow stuffed with pine needles. She envied the birds that lived in the actual trees.”
― Rebecca Rasmussen, The Bird Sisters

“According to her chore list, she was supposed to feed the chickens. Milly hd already retrieved the eggs. She'd mentioned something about egg salad, if she could round up a jar of pickles in the cellar.
"A change might do us good," she'd said, which made Twiss laugh.
"Nothing like old pickles to oust us from routine."
Twiss fed the chickens, each of whom she called Raoul because she couldn't tell them apart, and swept up the droppings on the floor.”
― Rebecca Rasmussen, The Bird Sisters

“My art teacher says I have talent," Twiss told her father, thinking of her last piece. Although she usually preferred to draw things like bloody axes and pus balls, for the last project of the quarter her teacher had asked them to draw a picture of what happiness felt like. Twiss drew a flock of all different kinds of birds- red, blue, gray, green- taking flight from the top branches of an old-growth pine tree. When her teacher asked her to explain the drawing, Twiss said to her happiness felt like freedom. Sadness felt like the opposite.”
― Rebecca Rasmussen, The Bird Sisters