Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.
In the sea of grief, there were islands of grace, moments in time when one could remember what was left rather than all that had been lost.
It was true; always had been. Friendships were like marriages in that way. Routines and patterns were poured early and hardened like cement.
She used to tell me that she couldn't feel the sunlight anymore, not even when she was standing in it, not even when it was hot on her cheeks
Maybe time didn't heal wounds exactly, but it gave you a kind of armor, or a new perspective. A way to remember with a smile instead of a sob.
Thoughts - even fears - were airy things, formless until you made them solid with your voice and once given that weight, they could crush you.
It’s a promise ring,” he said solemnly. “The lady at the store said it’s what you give the girl you love. It means I want to marry you someday.
I didn't know how...deep love ran, how it was in your blood, not your heart, and how that same blood pumped through your veins your whole life.
Whenever I write about motherhood - and I write about it a lot - I am drawing on my experiences as a mother and also my experiences as a daughter.
Finding your passion isn't just about careers and money. It's about finding your authentic self. The one you've buried beneath other people's needs.
We women. as glue for the family. lead lives that are important and conflicted. What we women choose to give up for our families is important and valid.
Nobody's strong enough to be a parent. We just do it, blindly, going forward on faith and love and hope. That's all it is...Being afraid...and going on.
At one point, she'd wanted to hurl the whole breakfast at the wall. And then she'd remember why it was that men had temper tantrums and women didn't: cleanup.
From the first time we met, we knew everything that mattered about each other, didn't we? We just knew. I guess that's what best friends are: parts of each other.
Jude remembered this pain. Every woman had felt some version of it: the end of first love. It was when you learned, for good and always, that love could be impermanent.
You look great," he said. It made her smile, even if it was a lie. "I'm as big as a house." He laughed. "I like houses. In fact, I'm thinking about architecture as a career.
....both had learned that everything could change in an instant, and that the heartfelt vows of people in love were fragile words that, once shattered, could cut so deeply you'd bleed forever.
If she wasn't careful, she'd slide without a ripple into the gently flowing stream of her old life, pulled back under the current without a wimper of protest. Another housewife lost in the flow.
I might screw up, I might embarrass you, I might yell at you, but I will never, ever stop loving you. You're my first born. The first time I held you... I fell in love so hard it cracked my bones.
And maybe that was how it was supposed to be...Joy and sadness were part of the package; the trick, perhaps,was to let yourself feel all of it, but to hold on to the joy just a little more tightly.
Oh, Mia. You haven’t even begun to find out who you really are, and, believe me, other boys are going to fall in love with you. If a guy can’t see how special you are, he isn’t good enough for you.
That was the one thing she knew now. Some chances came and went, and if you missed them, you could spend the rest of your life standing alone, waiting for an opportunity that had already passed you by.
I prefer to scare myself in the ordinary ways, Daddy. Like letting my children cross the country for college. Why bungee jump when you can put a kindergartener on a school bus? Now, that's real terror.
Girls like you can't understand," Julia said, and it was true. Ellie had been popular. She didn't know that some hurts were like a once-broken bone. In the right weather, they could ache for a lifetime.
what shall we drink to?" "How about family?" Stacy said, showing up just in time to pour a fourth shot. "To those who are here, those who are gone, and those who are lost." and she clicked glasses with mom
And before you barrel through some idiotic Cosmo girl list of how-well-do-you-know-your-man questions, let me say that I don't know squat about him except that he kisses like a god and screws like a devil.
To make real friends you have to put yourself out there. Sometimes people will let you down, but you can't let that stop you. If you get hurt, you just pick yourself up, dust off your feelings, and try again.
It was the Magic Hour, the moment in time when every leaf and blade of grass seemed to separate, when sunlight, burnished by the rain and softened by the coming night, gave the world an impossibly beautiful glow.
I have often wished in the past few years that my mom were here to help me as I raised my own teenage son. As a girl, with my own mom, I thought I knew it all; now I know better. Somewhere, I know my mom is smiling.
but sometimes one person can hold you up in life, keep you standing, and without that hand to hold, you can find yourself free-falling no matter how strong you used to be, no matter how hard you try to remain steady.
There are always times in life that you don't fit in. But you have to go forward and make a place for yourself. That's what growing up is all about. Being strong and believing in yourself-even when you're most afraid.
The heat made people crazy. They woke from their damp bedsheets and went in search of a glass of water, surprised to find that when their vision cleared, they were holding instead the gun they kept hidden in the bookcase.
That was the thing about best friends. Like sisters and mothers, they could piss you off and make you cry and break your heart, but in the end, when the chips were down, they were there, making you laugh even in your darkest hours.
A romance novel focuses exclusively on two people falling in love. It can't be about a woman caring for her aging mother or something like that. It can have that element, but it has to be primarily about the male-female relationship.
She'd been criticized for holding the reins of parenthood too tightly, of controlling her children too completely, but she didn't know how to let go. From the moment she'd first decided to become a mother, it had been an epic battle.
To lose love is a terrible thing. But to turn away from it is unbearable. Will you spend the rest of your life replaying it in your head? Wondering if you walked away too soon or too easily? Or if you'll ever love anyone that deeply again?
Before this trip and all that she'd learned about the three of them, she would have gotten angry or changed the subject. Anything to obscure the pain she felt. Now she knew better. You carried your pain with you in life. There was no outrunning it.
As mothers and daughters, we are connected with one another. My mother is the bones of my spine, keeping me straight and true. She is my blood, making sure it runs rich and strong. She is the beating of my heart. I cannot now imagine a life without her.
Fifteen minutes later, Betsy came thundering down the stairs. "I'm going to the mall with Sierra to see a movie." Michael leaned forward, switched off the television. "Can you please rephrase that in the form of a question?" "Sure. Can I have some money?
You will always miss her. There will be days - even years from now - when the missing will be so sharp it will take your breath away. But there will be good days, too, months and years of them. In one way or another you'll be searching for her all your life.
We women make choices for others, not for ourselves, and when we are mothers, we...bear what we must for our children. You will protect them. It will hurt you; it will hurt them. Your job is to hide that your heart is breaking and do what they need you to do.
No mother. Two small words, and yet within them lay a bottomless well of pain and loss, a ceaseless mourning for touches that were never received and words of wisdom that were never spoken. No single word was big enough to adequately describe the loss of your mother.
Hands down, the hardest part for me is coming up with an idea. I spend about 14 months writing a book, and that's a lot of hours spent thinking about a single project. I simply have to love the idea. I'll go through dozens of workable ideas until I find the one that lights my fire.
She still felt shell-shocked by all of it, numb. Beneath the numbness, though, was a raw and terrible anger that was unlike anything she'd felt before. She had so little experience with genuine anger that it scared her. She actually worried that if she started screaming, she'd never stop.
Alice started to cry. It came with no sound, no shuddering, no childlike hysterics, just a soul-deep release that turned into moisture and dripped down her puffy pink cheeks. She touched her tears, frowning. Then she looked up at Julia and whimpered two words before she fell asleep. ‘Real hurts.’
It had been years since she question his fidelity, but he'd stepped on to the old fame track again, and that was where the road had taken them before. Infidelity could be forgiven, but forgetting it was impossible. Strangely, that wasn't what bothered her the most. What bothered her was that she didn't really care.
She had been ready to love this man from the moment she first saw him. In all these years, that had never changed. They'd hurt each other, let each other down, and yet, here they were after everything, together. She needed him now, needed him to remind her that she was live, that she wasn't alone, that she hadn't lost everything.
...This fear was unbearable. It unwrapped who she was, as neatly as he'd unwound her bandage, leaving too much pain and ugliness exposed. Nerve endings; he'd said they were the problem [causing phantom pain in the amputated limb]." Things that cut off, that ended abruptly or died--like parents and marriages--kept hurting forever.
It is a kiss that, once begun, never really ends. Interrupted, yes. Paused, certainly. But from that very moment onward, Vera sees the whole of her life as only a breath away from kissing him again. On that night in the park, they begin the delicate task of binding their souls together, creating a whole comprising their separate halves.
Time goes too quickly. This is the advice that my mother should have given me from her hospital bed. Instead of vague, unknowable quips like "Be careful what you wish for," she should have told me time slides away on a hillside of loose shale and takes everything in its path - dreams, opportunities, hopes. And youth. It takes that fastest of all.