“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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“...there is a word SILENT, which means khaamush, it has the exact same letters as the word LISTEN. So open your ears and tell me, what can you hear?”
― Indra Sinha, quote from Animal's People
“Better by far the destiny of plant or stone, bereft of knowledge and consciousness, but blessed at least with purity and peace of mind!’ These”
― Cao Xueqin, quote from The Dreamer Wakes
“2.Stop obsessing about the size of my nose. Yes, it’s freakishly large, but since there’s nothing I can do about that, it’s time I came to terms with it;
3. Avoid mirrors, so as not to be reminded of my nose;”
― Piper Banks, quote from Geek High
“There are five unavoidable givens, five immutable facts that come to visit all of us many times over: Everything changes and ends. Things do not always go according to plan. Life is not always fair. Pain is part of life. People are not loving and loyal all the time. These are the core challenges that we all face. But too often we live in denial of these facts. We behave as if somehow these givens aren’t always in effect, or not applicable to all of us. But when we oppose these five basic truths we resist reality, and life then becomes an endless series of disappointments, frustrations, and sorrows. In”
― David Richo, quote from The Five Things We Cannot Change: And the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them
“I had never deserved to be forgiven in the first place when I aas converted. I could do nothing to merit God's favour, His grace, His love. If all I had ever known was unmerited and undeserved grace, how could I then forfeit that which I never earned?... Was I too proud, in some strange, inverted way to humble myself to accept an unmerited forgiveness? I know that it was all of grace, yet my inner being wanted the right to do something to merit it. I was trying to work out my own salvation, to earn God's forgiveness, to prove the sincerity of my repentance...At last I knew that it was true. It was not based on my feeling or on my emotions. It was not dependent on my faith or my obedience. In no way could I merit or deserve it. He loved me. He knew me through and through, better than I knew myself, and yet still, He loved me. Christ died on Calvary to tell me that. Christ lives in Heaven, an unceasing intercessor on my behalf to make that love real to me in my experience.”
― quote from Living Sacrifice: Willing to Be Whittled as an Arrow
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Grit: The Banter and...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.
