Laura Schroff · 274 pages
Rating: (27.1K votes)
“If you make me lunch," he said, "will you put it in a brown paper bag?...Because when I see kids come to school with their lunch in a paper bag, that means that someone cares about them. Miss Laura, can I please have my lunch in a paper bag?”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“An invisible thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, and circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle. But it will never break.” —Ancient Chinese Proverb”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“We all want relationships that are healthy and resolved, and sometimes that simply doesn't happen. But the beauty of life is that inside these disappointments are hidden the most miraculous of blessings. What we lose and what we might have been pales against what we have.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“If love is the greatest gift of all-and I believe it is- then the greatest privilege of all is to be able to love someone.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“It’s something I call an invisible thread. It is, as the old Chinese proverb tells us, something that connects two people who are destined to meet, regardless of time and place and circumstance. Some legends call it the red string of fate; others, the thread of destiny.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“Rituals are what ground us in our lives, what give us a sense of safety and continuity. In”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“But sometimes we are not drawn to that which is different from what we know and fear. Sometimes we are drawn to that which is exactly the same.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“I realize some people might not understand why the paper bags were important. But to me, they showed that someone had taken the time to make me lunch. Someone had actually thought of me; someone cared about me.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“the things we carry with us from childhood define who we become.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“Yet I believed then and I believe now that there is something in the universe that brings people who need each other together. There is something that helps two wildly disparate people somehow forge a bond. Maybe it is precisely the thing that haunts us most that makes us reach out to others we think can provide some solace.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“An invisible thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, and circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle. But it will never break.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“I consider my childhood a gift," Maurice once told me. "It happened to me so I could learn the right way to raise my children.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“What we lose and what might have been pales against what we have.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“All of our stories, as much as they are about anything, are about loss. And, perhaps, they are about what might have been. I wanted happy, loving parents who danced waltzes in the living room. I wanted children of my own, desperately. We all want relationships that are healthy and resolved, and sometimes that simply doesn’t happen. But the beauty of life is that inside these disappointments are hidden the most miraculous of blessings. What we lose and what might have been pales against what we have.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He said, “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“But it was my father’s absences—those hours after he left and before he made it home again—that most defined my childhood and that still most define the person I’ve become.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“Kids like me—we know everything that’s going on out there. We see it on TV. But we’re always on the outside looking in. We know about stuff like Christmas, but kids like me, we know we can never have it for ourselves, so we don’t think about it.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“Look, neither of us is a superhero, nor even especially virtuous. When we met we were just two people with complicated pasts and fragile dreams. But somehow we found each other, and we became friends.
And that, you will see, made all the difference for us both.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“All I can say is, in my heart, I believe it was the only thing I could have done in that situation.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“For me, having a family was not just a desire, it was the thing that was going to save me. It was my only answer to the unsolvable puzzle of my father’s cruelty—my only chance to be happy in a way I had never experienced as a child.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“But I have to admit, if I am being honest, that the baggage I brought to our relationship played at least some part in causing it to end.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“language his parents understood best was a discourse of violent action, not words. Morris, in particular, was a heavy drug user and an alcoholic, and coke, dope, and Wild Irish Rose easily triggered his rages. When he came home at all, it was to rail at his family with”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“I had to accept he might be out of my life for good-that our strange little friendship was over just as it was beginning.
Yet I believed then and I believe now that there is something in the universe that brings people who need each other together.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“You see," Maurice said to me, beaming, "I told you I'd get a big table someday.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“and that’s when I asked her to tell me what mattered to her in life.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“I could not have known that the incident she relayed to me would, in my mind, come to define Laura and the kind of person she is.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“We live in a cynical world, and sometimes our cynicism gets in the way of seeing things for what they are.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“Rituals are what ground us in our lives, what give us a sense of safety and continuity.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“something I call an invisible thread. It is, as the old Chinese proverb tells us, something that connects two people who are destined to meet, regardless of time and place and circumstance. Some legends call it the red string of fate; others,”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“him how to live on the streets. The”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“Eric walks toward me, and I back away by instinct. I try not to be afraid of him, but I know how smart he is and that if I’m not careful he’ll notice that I keep staring at her, and that will be my undoing.”
― Veronica Roth, quote from Free Four: Tobias Tells the Divergent Knife-Throwing Scene
“Oh hell. I might not trust him with my heart but I really wanted to trust him with my body. Even if it was just this once.”
― Abbi Glines, quote from Never Too Far
“One advantage women throughout time have had is that the little boy in men always remember a time when women were all-powerful.”
― Jude Deveraux, quote from A Knight in Shining Armor
“In the loveliest town of all where the houses were white and high and the elm trees were green and higher than the houses where the front yards were wide and pleasant and the back yards were bushy and worth finding out about, where the streets sloped down to the stream and the stream flowed quietly under the bridge, where the lawns ended in orchards and the orchards ended in fields and the fields ended in pastures and the pastures climbed the hill and disappeared over the top toward the wonderful wide sky, in this loveliest of all towns Stuart stopped to get a drink of sarsaparilla.”
― E.B. White, quote from Stuart Little
“Have a joke for me Tania," he says, "I could use a joke."
"Hmm." She thinks, looks at him, looks to see where Anthony is. He's far in the back. "Okay, what about this." With a short cough she leans into Alexander and lowers her voice.
"A man and his young girlfriend are driving in a car. The man has never seen his girlfriend naked. She thinks he is driving too slow, so they decide to play a game. For every five miles he goes above 50, she will take off a piece of her clothing. In no time at all, he is flying and she is naked. The man gets so excited that he loses control of the car. It veers off the road and hits a tree. She is unharmed but he is stuck in the car and can’t get out. “Go back on the road and get help,” he tells her. “But I’m naked,” she says. He rummages around and pulls off his shoe. “Here, just put this between your legs to cover yourself.” She does as she is told and runs out to the road. A truck driver, seeing a naked crying woman, stops. “Help me, Help me,” she sobs, “My boyfriend is stuck and I can’t get him out.”
The Truck driver says, “Miss, if he’s that far in, I’m afraid he’s a goner.”
― Paullina Simons, quote from The Summer Garden
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