Mark Goulston · 177 pages
Rating: (414 votes)
“Emotions are built on layers. Beneath hatred is usually anger; beneath anger is frustration; beneath frustration is hurt; beneath hurt is fear. If you keep expressing your feelings, you will generally move through them in that order. What begins with “I hate you” culminates in “I’m scared. I don’t want to lose you, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
“You know the old saying, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Well, if you always get out as soon as the kitchen gets hot, your life will end up half-baked.”
“man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.” —ALEXANDER POPE”
“You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.” —INDIRA GANDHI”
“Both partners describe one of their own character flaws. Humility resolves self-righteousness.”
“Both partners share a quality of the other person that they admire. Admiration resolves disappointment. Both partners express appreciation for something that the other one did. Gratitude resolves resentment. Both partners apologize, without excuses, for something they did to hurt the other person. Remorse resolves hurt.”
“All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a simple lonely action.”
“But the goal is not to replace what cannot be replaced, or duplicate what cannot be duplicated, but simply to create opportunities for new memories. One”
“That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way.” —DORIS LESSING Ordinary”
“Those who are comfortable taking chances know that the best way to grow is to reach beyond their grasp. Their sense of direction comes from the heart. They don’t shy away from surprise; they might even seek it out. And they seldom die with regrets. In the end we regret not what we have done but what we have not done.”
“I love you,” he whispered. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Sometimes I feel like we're a knot, too tangled to be taken apart.”
“When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, “What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?”
“They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,” Pa said. “Go to sleep, now.”
But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the firelight gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.
She thought to herself, “This is now.”
She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.”
“I claim you, Rowan Whitethorn. I don't care what you say and how much you protest. I claim you as my friend.”
“Look back, hold a torch to light the recesses of the dark. Listen to the footsteps that echo behind, when you walk alone.
All the time the ghosts flit past and through us, hiding in the future. We look in the mirror and see the shades of other faces looking back through the years; we see the shape of memory, standing solid in an empty doorway. By blood and by choice, we make our ghosts; we haunt ourselves.
Each ghost comes unbidden from the misty grounds of dream and silence.
Our rational minds say, "No, it isn't."
But another part, an older part, echoes always softly in the dark, "Yes, but it could be.”
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