Quotes from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“It’s life. You don’t figure it out. You just climb up on the beast and ride.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“I try to believe," she said, "that God doesn't give you more than one little piece of the story at once. You know, the story of your life. Otherwise your heart would crack wider than you could handle. He only cracks it enough so you can still walk, like someone wearing a cast. But you've still got a crack running up your side, big enough for a sapling to grow out of. Only no one sees it. Nobody sees it. Everybody thinks you're one whole piece, and so they treat you maybe not so gentle as they could see that crack.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“Friends are supposed to act like harbor boats—let you know if you’re off course. But it ain’t always possible…”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“life is short but it is wide. this too shall pass.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“She longed for porch friendship, for the sticky, hot sensation of familiar female legs thrown over hers in companionship. She pined for the girliness of it all, the unplanned, improvisational laziness. She wanted to soak the words 'time management' out of her lexicon. She wanted to hand over, to yield, to let herself float down the unchartered beautiful fertile musky swamp of life, where creativity and eroticism and deep intelligence dwell.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“Some women pray for their daughters to marry good husbands. I pray that my girls will find girlfriends half as loyal and true as the Ya-Yas.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“She used to say she could taste sleep and that it was as delicious as a BLT on fresh French bread.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“I have been to the edge and lived to tell the tale..”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“But all she wanted to do was lie in bed, eat Kraft macaroni and cheese, and hide from the alligators.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“What does my smile look like now? Vivi wondered. Can you reclaim that free-girl smile, or is it like virginity- once you loose it, that's it?”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“At the beauty of what she had stumbled onto, at the fear that something terrible would happen because she was not vigilant enough. She cried at the fear of something so good that she would not be brave enough to bear it.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“But who has time to write memoirs? I’m still living my memoirs.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“... a full moon shimmered over central Louisiana. This was no rinky-dink moon. This was a moon you had to curtsy to. A big, heavy, mysterious, beautiful, bossy moon. The kind you want to serve things to on a silver platter.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“I want to lay up like that, to float unstructured, without ambition or anxiety. I want to inhabit my life like a porch.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“Because I miss them. Because I need them. Because I love them.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“There is the truth of history, and there is the truth of what a person remembers.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“You know how some people, when they're together, they somehow make you feel more hopeful? Make you feel like the world is not the insane place it really is?”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“…the love we most cherish will, of necessity, bring us pain. Because that love is like the setting of a body with broken bones. But I want to stage the setting. I want to direct all scenes.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“Of all the secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood the most divine was humor.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“They wanted to rock, they wanted to roll, they wanted to feel the peculiarly human feeling of having a perfect night in an imperfect world.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“These are all I have. I do not have the wide, bright beacon of some solid old lighthouse, guiding ships safely home, past the jaggedrocks. I only have these little glimmers that flicker and then go out.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“This is a cardinal Ya-Ya rule: you must meet each person's eyes while clinking glasses in a toast. Otherwise, the ritual has no meaning, it's just pure show. And that is something the Ya-Yas are not.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“What they don't know is that I went over the edge years ago, and lived to tell the tale.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“Do you think any of us know how to love?! Do you think anybody would ever do anything if they waited until they knew how to love?! Do you think that babies would ever get made or meals cooked or crops planed or books written or what God-damn-have-you? Do you think people would even get out of bed in the morning if they waited until they knew how to love? You have had too much therapy. Or not enough. God knows how to love, kiddo. The rest of us are only good actors.

Forget love. Try good manners.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“The soft aroma of old worn cotton from a linen chest, the lingering smell of tobacco on an angora sweater; Jergen's hand lotion, sauteed green peppers and onions; the sweet, nutty smell of peanut butter and bananas, the oaken smell of good bourbon. A combination of lily of the valley, cedar, vanilla, and somewhere, the lingering of old rose. These smells are older than any thought. Mama, Teensy, Neecie, and Caro, each one of them had an individual scent, to be sure. But this is the Gumbo of their scents. This is the Gumbo Ya-Ya. This is the internal vial of perfume I carry with me everywhere I go.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“She walks barefoot into the humid night, moonlight on her freckled shoulders. Near a huge, live oak tree on the edge of her father's cotton fields, Sidda looks up into the sky. In the crook of the crescent moon sits the Holy Lady, with strong muscles and a merciful heart. She kicks her splendid legs like the moon is her swing and the sky, her front porch. She waves down at Sidda like she has just spotted an old buddy.
Sidda stands in the moonlight and lets the Blessed Mother love every hair on her six-year-old head. Tenderness flows down from the moon and up from the earth. For one fleeting, luminous moment, Sidda Walker knows there has never been a time when she has not been loved.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“Many people are more like the earth than we know. Maybe they have fault lines that sooner or later are going to split open under pressure.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“Life is short, but it is wide. Genevieve Whitman taught me that.”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

“Shep claimed eating cake like that so early in the morning was a 'whore's breakfast.' The rest of them didn't care. They were happy little whores who didn't worry about saving a morsel. ”
― Rebecca Wells, quote from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

About the author

Popular quotes

“We don’t accept your world your rules your wars We don’t accept your cruelty and unkindness. We don’t believe some need to suffer for others to survive or that there isn’t enough to go around or that corporations are the only and best economic arrangement. And”
― Eve Ensler, quote from I am an Emotional Creature

“Realize the past no longer holds you captive. It can only continue to hurt you if you hold on to it. Let the past go. A simply abundant world awaits.”
― Sarah Ban Breathnach, quote from Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy

“When we meet somebody whose separate tunnel-reality is obviously far different from ours, we are a bit frightened and always disoriented. We tend to think they are mad, or that they are crooks trying to con us in some way, or that they are hoaxers playing a joke. Yet it is neurologically obvious that no two brains have the same genetically-programmed hard wiring, the same imprints, the same conditioning, the same learning experiences. We are all living in separate realities. That is why communication fails so often, and misunderstandings and resentments are so common. I say "meow" and you say "Bow-wow," and each of us is convinced the other is a bit dumb.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, quote from Prometheus Rising

“Don't sound so grumpy. Next thing you know you'll be whinning and giving me puppy dog eyes.”
― Dana Marie Bell, quote from Shadow of the Wolf

“The wind sounds like people crying.”
― Lindsey Barraclough, quote from Long Lankin

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.