Quotes from Looking for Me

Beth Hoffman ·  354 pages

Rating: (11K votes)


“Never tie your happiness to the tail of someone else's kite.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me


“Sometimes it's not what we hold on to that shapes our lives--it's what we're willing to let go of.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me


“Maybe that's what love does - smooths the hard edges of life, giving us a gentle place to land when we fall.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me


“I thought about that old saying, how we can never go home again. But I think it's more like a piece of us stays behind when we leave -- a piece we can never reclaim, one that awaits our next visit and demands that we remember.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me


“You can't see the whole sky from one window.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me



“But even so, I wondered--how well do we really ever know someone?”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me


“You're wrong, Mama. The world's beautiful, but you're so busy being disappointed in everything you don't see it!!”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me


“But I hurt everywhere, Mama. How do I make it stop?" She looked at me with a sad smile. "I don't know. Only you can figure that out. But try to remember something, Teddi: Never tie you happiness to the tail of someone else's kite.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me


“I knew the flight into the crazy skies of love would always outweigh the uncertainty of days that didn't yet belong to me.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me


“Never tie your happiness to the end of someone else's kite.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me



About the author

Beth Hoffman
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“God was all powerful and omniscient, and he alone defined truth and indeed was truth. But he did not assert that power in a way that ever smacked of power in the worldly sense. He had always and ever shown himself in weakness. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. Jesus died on the cross for those who had mocked and rejected him. God did not crush us but showed us mercy, and Luther could see that the church had not adopted this view, but had itself become wed to worldly power. It took money that was not its own and burned those who disagreed with what it taught. Luther was trying to call the church back to its true roots, to a biblical idea of a merciful God who did not demand that we obey but who first loved us and first made us righteous before he expected us to live righteously.”
― Eric Metaxas, quote from Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World


“The peacemaker must have the strongest heart and the toughest will in the room.”
― Nalini Singh, quote from Silver Silence


“At the end of that class Demian said to me thoughtfully: "There’s something I don’t like about this story, Sinclair. Why don’t you read it once more and give it the acid test? There’s something about it that doesn’t taste right. I mean the business with the two thieves. The three crosses standing next to each other on the hill are almost impressive, to be sure. But now comes this sentimental little treatise about the good thief. At first he was a thorough scoundrel, had committed all those awful things and God knows what else, and now he dissolves in tears and celebrates such a tearful feast of self-improvement and remorse! What’s the sense of repenting if you’re two steps from the grave? I ask you. Once again, it’s nothing but a priest’s fairy tale, saccharine and dishonest, touched up with sentimentality and given a high edifying background. If you had to pick a friend from between the two thieves or decide which one you’d rather trust, you most certainly wouldn’t choose the sniveling convert. No, the other fellow, he’s a man of character. He doesn’t give a hoot for ‘conversion’, which to a man in his position can’t be anything but a pretty speech. He follows his destiny to it’s appointed end and does not turn coward and forswear the devil, who has aided and abetted him until then. He has character, and people with character tend to receive the short end of the stick in biblical stories. Perhaps he’s even a descendant of Cain. Don’t you agree?"

I was dismayed. Until now I had felt completely at home in the story of the Crucifixion. Now I saw for the first time with how little individuality, with how little power of imagination I had listened to it and read it. Still, Demian’s new concept seemed vaguely sinister and threatened to topple beliefs on whose continued existence I felt I simply had to insist. No, one could not make light of everything, especially not of the most Sacred matters.

As usual he noticed my resistance even before I had said anything.

"I know," he said in a resigned tone of voice, "it’s the same old story: don’t take these stories seriously! But I have to tell you something: this is one of the very places that reveals the poverty of this religion most distinctly. The point is that this God of both Old and New Testaments is certainly an extraordinary figure but not what he purports to represent. He is all that is good, noble, fatherly, beautiful, elevated, sentimental—true! But the world consists of something else besides. And what is left over is ascribed to the devil, this entire slice of world, this entire half is hushed up. In exactly the same way they praise God as the father of all life but simply refuse to say a word about our sexual life on which it’s all based, describing it whenever possible as sinful, the work of the devil. I have no objection to worshiping this God Jehovah, far from it. But I mean we ought to consider everything sacred, the entire world, not merely this artificially separated half! Thus alongside the divine service we should also have a service for the devil. I feel that would be right. Otherwise you must create for yourself a God that contains the devil too and in front of which you needn’t close your eyes when the most natural things in the world take place.”
― Hermann Hesse, quote from Demian


“I wasn't pretty, but as my mother once said, prettiness wasn't my profession.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from Die Seufzende Wendeltreppe


“I hadn't had a book in my hands for four months, and the mere idea of a book where I could see words printed one after another, lines, pages, leaves, a book in which I could pursue new, different, fresh thoughts to divert me, could take them into my brain, had something both intoxicating and stupefying about it.”
― Stefan Zweig, quote from Schachnovelle


Interesting books

Nausea
(65.6K)
Nausea
by Jean-Paul Sartre
The Two Towers
(562.8K)
The Two Towers
by J.R.R. Tolkien
Christy
(43.5K)
Christy
by Catherine Marshall
The Wedding
(127.5K)
The Wedding
by Nicholas Sparks
Geek Love
(46.8K)
Geek Love
by Katherine Dunn
84, Charing Cross Road
(32K)
84, Charing Cross Ro...
by Helene Hanff

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.