“Things had a way of working out for the best when you let them run their course.”
“If you didn't remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wished it hadn't?”
“If you're afraid of everyone leaving you, what do you do?"
Make them stay."
And if you can't do that, or don't know how to?"
Ellie shrugged. "I don't know."
Yes, you do. In fact, you've done it. You leave first," Coop said, "so you don't have to watch them walk away.”
“If she spoke, she would tell him the truth: she was not okay at all, but horribly empty, now that she knew what it was like to be filled.”
“She shrugged. "You can be happy for someone else's good fortune, but that doesn't mean you forget your own bad luck.”
“She wanted him to tell her that when you love someone so hard and so fierce, it was all right to do things that you knew were wrong.”
“If you never go out on that limb, you're missing a hell of a view.”
“You know what I noticed when I was with Jacob? In your world, people can reach each other in an instant. There's the telephone, and the fax - and on the computer you can talk to someone all the way around the world. You've got people telling their secrets on TV talk shows, and magazines that publish pictures of movie stars trying to hide their homes. All those connections, but everyone there seems so lonely.”
“We all have things that come back to haunt us. Some of us just see them more clearly than others.”
“Oh,that's right. You're a...what did you call it? Ah, a ghost hunter. You don't have to see things to believe them."
Adam's gaze locked onto the persecutor's. "Maybe you've got that backward," he said. "Maybe it's just that I believe things you cant see.”
“A world that was crowded with people could still be a very lonely place.”
“You're unwilling to go out on a limb because it just might break underneath you.”
“But Katie knew it was a sin, had known from the moment she made the decision to lie with Adam. However, the transgression wasn't making love without the sanction of marriage. It was that for the first time in her life, Katie had put herself first. Put her own wants and needs above everything and everyone else.”
“How many times would I throw this away before I realized it was what I had been looking for all along?”
“Coop kissed me deeply, drawing my breath from me in a long, sweet ribbon. "Perhaps I haven't mentioned it, but I'm an expert when it comes to first steps."
Are you," I said. "Then tell me how."
You close your eyes," Coop answered, "and jump.”
“You get through it, you just never get over it”
“Energy can't be destroyed, only converted into something different. So when a person dies, where does that energy go?”
“The English judged a person so that they'd be justified in casting her out. The Amish judged a person so that they'd be justified in welcoming her back. Where I'm from, if someone is accused of sinning, it's not so that others can place blame. It's so that the person can make amends and move on.”
“I wonder if you've got a minute."
I have many minutes, all of them used toward a common purpose.”
“You can be happy for someone else's good fortune but that doesn't mean you forget your own bad luck.”
“It’s the Lord’s will,” she said quietly. “You get through it. You just never get over it.”
“A saguaro can fall for a snowman but where would they set up house?”
“Our culture promotes individuality, while the Amish are deeply entrenched in community. To us, if someone stands out, it's no big deal because diversity is respected and expected. To the Amish, there's no room for deviation from the norm. It's important to fit in, because that similarity of identity is what defines the society. If you don't fit in, the consequences are psychological tragic, you stand alone when all you've ever known is being part of the group.”
“Everything you said, Ellie, it's true. I should be very angry. I was, for a time, but now I'm not. Now I've gotten past my own selfishness to where I've got to help her. See, when you're Plain, you don't put yourself forward. You just don't do it, because that would be Hochmut–puffing yourself up–and the truth is there's always others more important than you. So Katie, when she hears others telling lies about her and this baby, she won’t want to fight back, or stand up for herself. I am here to stand up for her.”
“If you knew what those [pork rinds] did to your body, you wouldn't eat them.'
'If you knew when the last time I ate was, you wouldn't bother me.”
“...I stopped trying to figure out American juries around the same time Adam Sandler movies started raking in millions at the box office--people just don't act predictably.”
“You know, if you monitored the humidity a little better in here, you might reduce the irritants.'
'I assume you're referring to the mites, and not the lawyers.”
“As I watched her, I understood why a mother would starve herself to feed a baby; how there was always time and room for a child to curl close to her side; how she could be soft enough to serve as a pillow and strong enough to move heaven and earth.”
“You can’t create life in a place that’s dying by degrees.”
“I wasn't going to wait around for some prince, when I could very well save myself.”
“His faith was no game he played. It was not a mantle to put on or be taken off as the need arose. The stories he took so literally he held dearer than his own life and he could not doubt them. Doubt would have destroyed him. I had no desire to destroy a foolish old man who suffered a fatal ignorance.”
“Those who lived by the sword were forced to die by it.”
“Maybe all the strings inside him broke.”
“I understood what he was doing, that he had spent four years fulfilling the absurd and tedious duty of graduating from college and now he was emancipated from that world of abstraction, false security, parents, and material excess.”
“There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean – hell, I know that.”
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