Quotes from The Light Between Oceans

“You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“Scars are just another kind of memory.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“There are still more days to travel in this life. And he knows that the man who makes the journey has been shaped by every day and every person along the way. Scars are just another kind of memory....Soon enough the days will close over their lives, the grass will grow over their graves, until their story is just an unvisited headstone.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“Izz, I've learned the hard way that to have any kind of a future you've got to give up hope of ever changing your past.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“Sometimes life turns out hard, Isabel. Sometimes it just bites right through you. And sometimes, just when you think it's done its worst, it comes back and takes another chunk.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“But how? How can you just get over these things, darling?...You've had so much strife but you're always happy. How do you do it?'
'I choose to...I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened, like my father did, or I can forgive and forget.'
'But it's not that easy.'
He smiled that Frank smile. 'Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things...I would have to make a list, a very, very long list and make sure I hated the people on it the right amount. That I did a proper job of hating, too: very Teutonic! No' - his voice became sober- 'we always have a choice. All of us.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“Perhaps when it comes to it, no one is just the worst thing they ever did.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“History is that which is agreed upon by mutual consent.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“We live with the decisions we make, Bill. That’s what bravery is. Standing by the consequences of your mistakes.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“You don’t think ahead in years or months: you think about this hour, and maybe the next. Anything else is speculation.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“Sometimes it's good to leave the past in the past.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“No one ever has or ever will travel quite the same path on earth...”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“It is a luxury to do something that serves no practical purpose: the luxury of civilization.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“Then he remembered Ralph's words--"no point in fighting your war over and over until you get it right.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“The oceans never stop ... the wind never finishes. Sometimes it disappears, but only to gather momentum from somewhere else, returning to fling itself at the island ... Existence here is on the scale of giants. Time is in the millions of years; rocks which from a distance look like dice cast against the shore are boulders hundreds of feet wide, licked round by millennia ...”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“That's how life goes on - protected by the silence that anesthetizes shame.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“Very slowly, he turned a full circle, taking in the nothingness of it all. It seemed his lungs could never be large enough to breathe in this much air, his eyes could never see this much space, nor could he near the full extent of the rolling, roaring ocean. For the briefest moment, he had no edges.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“When it comes to their kids, parents are all just instinct and hope. And fear.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“Humans withdraw to their homes, and surrender the night to the creatures that own it: the crickets, the owls, the snakes. A world that hasn't changed for hundreds of thousands of years wakes up, and carries on as if the daylight and the humans and the changes to the landscape have all been an illusion.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“There are times when the ocean is not the ocean - not blue, not even water, but some violent explosion of energy and danger: fierceness on a scale only gods can summon.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“Putting down the burden of the lie has meant giving up the freedom of the dream.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“Being over there changes a man. Right and wrong don't look so different anymore to some.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“I promised to spend my life with you. I still want to spend my life with you. Izz, I've learned the hard way that to have any kind of a future you've got to give up hope of ever changing your past.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“Coming back last time to the house she grew up in, Isabel had been reminded of the darkness that had descended with her brothers' deaths, how loss had leaked all over her mother's life like a stain. As a fourteen-year-old, Isabel had searched the dictionary. She knew that if a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent loss a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter. That seemed odd. As to her own status, she wondered whether she was still technically a sister, now that her adored brothers had died.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“Sometimes, you're the one who strikes it lucky. Sometimes, it's the other poor bastard who's left with the short straw, and you just have to shut up and get on with it.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“Soon enough the days will close over their lives, the grass will grow over their graves, until their story is just an unvisited headstone.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“If a lighthouse looks like it's in a different place, it's not the lighthouse that's moved.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“Such a mysterious business, motherhood. How brave a woman must be to embark on it.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

“When he wakes sometimes from dark dreams of broken cradles, and compasses without bearings, he pushes the unease down, lets the daylight contradict it. And isolation lulls him with the music of the lie.”
― M.L. Stedman, quote from The Light Between Oceans

Video

About the author

Popular quotes

“Because I’ve never died, I am immortal.”
― George R. Stewart, quote from Earth Abides

“I am sentimental,’ she said. ‘I could dissect a koala but not its baby. I like the words damozel, eglantine, elegant. I love when you kiss my elongated white hand.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, quote from Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle

“It turns out that one can perpetrate all manner of heinous villainy under a cloak of courtesy and good cheer. . .a man will forfeit all sensible self-interest if he finds you affable enough to share your company over a flagon of ale.”
― Christopher Moore, quote from Fool

“No one's making any decisions today," Mom translated. "It's late, and we're all tired and a little overwhelmed. Besides, Lucius, Jessica is not ready to contemplate marriage. She hasn't even kissed a boy yet, for goodness' sake."

Lucius smirked at me, raising one eyebrow. "Really? No suitors? How shocking. I would have thought your pitchfork skills would be attractive to certain bachelors here in farm country.”
― Beth Fantaskey, quote from Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side

“It was starting to smell really good in here. And if I liked what it smelled like, then they were liking what they were smelling, and ah…that would be me.”
― Kim Harrison, quote from White Witch, Black Curse

Interesting books

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.