“I've come to think that's what heaven is- a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“I like the assumption that everyone is trying his best, and we should all just be kind to each other.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“I learned long ago that loss is not only probable but inevitable. I know what it means to lose everything, to let go of one life and find another. And now I feel, with a strange, deep certainty, that it must be my lot in life to be taught that lesson over and over again.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“Time constricts and flattens, you know. It's not evenly weighted. Certain moments linger in the mind and others disappear.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason - to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“Do you believe in spirits? Or ghosts?...Yes, I do. I believe in ghosts....They're the ones who haunt us. The ones who have left us behind."
"Vivian has come back to the idea that the people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our ordinary moments. They're with us in the grocery store, as we turn the corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles."
"The things that matter stay with you, seep into your skin.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“And so it is that you learn how to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“It is good to test your limits now and then, learn what the body is capable of, what you can endure.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments. They’re with us in the grocery store, as we turn a corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“She knows too well what it's like to tamp down your natural inclinations, to force a smile when you feel numb. [...] The expression of emotion does not come naturally, so you learn to fake it. To pretend. To display an empathy you don't really feel. And so it is that you learn to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“My entire life has felt like chance. Random moments of loss and connection. This is the first one that feels, instead, like fate.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“You got to learn to take what people are willing to give.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“I love you," he writes again and again. "I can't bear to live without you. I'm counting the minutes until I see you." The words he uses are the idioms of popular songs and poems in the newspaper. And mine to him are no less cliched. I puzzle over the onionskin, trying to spill my heart onto the page. But I can only come up with the same words, in the same order, and hope the depth of feeling beneath them gives them weight and substance. I love you. I miss you. Be careful. Be safe.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“I am not glad she is dead, but I am not sorry she is gone.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“you are only as interesting as you are useful to someone”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“Turtles carry their homes on their backs.” Running her finger over the tattoo, she tells him what her dad told her: “They’re exposed and hidden at the same time. They’re a symbol of strength and perseverance.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“She has never tried to find out what happened to her family — her mother or her relatives in Ireland. But over and over, Molly begins to understand as she listens to the tapes, Vivian has come back to the idea that the people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments. They're with us in the grocery store, as we turn a corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“Molly learned long ago that a lot of the heartbreak and betrayal that other people fear their entire lives, she has already faced. Father dead. Mother off the deep end. Shuttled around and rejected time and time again. And still she breathes and sleeps and grows taller. She wakes up every morning and puts on clothes. So when she says it's okay, what she means is that she knows she can survive just about anything.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“Upright and do right make all right.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“You can't find peace until you fin fall the pieces.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“you can’t find peace until you find all the pieces. She wants to help Vivian find some kind of peace, elusive and fleeting as it may be.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason — to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?" Molly asks when Vivian reads some of these stories aloud.
"It certainly helps," Vivian says.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“He reaches over and touches my necklace. "You still have it. That gives me faith."
"Faith in what?"
"God, I suppose. No, I don't know. Survival.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“Mrs. Scatcherd raps Dutchy's knuckles several times with a long wooden ruler, though it seems to me a halfhearted penalty. He barely winces, then shakes his hands twice in the air and winks at me. Truly , there isn't much more she can do. Stripped of family and identity, fed meager rations, consigned to hard wooden seats until we are to be, as Slobbery Jack suggested, sold into slavery — our mere existence is punishment enough.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“So I am learning to pretend, to smile and nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“I have come to think that's where Heaven is, a place in the memories of other where our best selves live”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“She should be grateful. Without Vivian she'd be sliding down a dark path toward nowhere good . But it kind of feels nice to nurture her resentment, to foster it. It's something she can savor and control, this feeling of having been wronged by the world. That she has fulfilled her role as a thieving member of the underclass, now indentured to this genteel midwestern white lady, is too perfect for words.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“As with Dutchy and Carmine on the train, this little cluster of women has become a kind of family to me. Like an abandoned foal that nestles against cows in the barnyard, maybe I just need to feel the warmth of belonging. And if I'm not going to find that with the Byrnes, I will find it, however partial and illusory, with the women in the sewing room.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“Forgive me if I'm wrong. But are you-were you-did you come here on a train from New York about ten years ago?”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
“easier to assume that people have it out for you than to be disappointed when they don’t come through.”
― Christina Baker Kline, quote from Orphan Train
Christina Baker Kline
Born place: Cambridge, The United Kingdom
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“This should be the most homoerotically charged baseball dance number since “I Don't Dance” in High School Musical 2.”
― David Levithan, quote from Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story
“Mather wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her forward, cupping the back of her head as he slid his face down to hers. He hovered just shy of her lips, panting, chocking because, ice above, this moment - this was everything, the entirety of his life expanding from this one act, revolving around her because she was at the center of everything good that had ever happened to him.”
― Sara Raasch, quote from Frost Like Night
“You're a special kind of stupid”
― Victoria Aveyard, quote from Cruel Crown
“I've never heard of it. And, I don't like to brag, but I read a lot. I mean a lot. And most of it is classified. - Megan”
― Ally Carter, quote from Take the Key and Lock Her Up
“There is nothing wrong with standing back and thinking. To paraphrase several sages: 'Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.”
― Susan Sontag, quote from Regarding the Pain of Others
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Hope for the Trouble...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.
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