Quotes from The Rest of Her Life

“You could push people away, past their limits, even accidentally, and then it was just too late to get them back”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life

“Maybe children just want whatever it is they don't get. And then they grow up and give their children what they wanted, be it silence or information, affection or independence--so that child, in turn, craves something else. With every generation the pendulum swings from opposite to opposite, stillness and peace so elusive.”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life

“She wondered when her daughter would realise that for the most part, people weren't that different. Young and old, male or female, pretty much everyone she knew wanted the same things: The wanted to feel peace in their hearts, they wanted a life without turmoil, they wanted to be happy. The difference, she thought, was that most young people seemed to think that those things lay somewhere in the future. While most older people believed that they lay in the past.”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life

“Worrying was painful .... but compared to the alternative, a privilege”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life

“Well,” Leigh said, because there was nothing else. She looked back at the picture of herself and Pam in the blue dresses. “We did have it easier than she did. I’m sure we did. And I should thank her for that, I guess.”

Pam nodded. She looked calm, untroubled. Leigh, tapped her foot on the ottoman and glanced at her mother’s photographs. “But it felt like that was all she saw when she looked at us.” She leaned forward to get Pam’s attention. She wanted her sister to understand, to see things the way she had. “You know? I always felt like she never saw me, me as a individual. Do you know what I am saying? She gave us everything she ever wanted. But she never thought about what we wanted that it may be different. Or that we might need something that she didn’t. She never saw us separate from herself. She never saw us.” She paused, nodding in agreement with herself. That was it. She decided. She’d never put words to the feeling before, but that was it. That had been the whole trouble between them.

But when she looked back at Pam, her satisfaction vanished. Her sister’s mouth was pulled tight, her eyes wide. She looked away from Leigh, saying nothing, still the loyal confidante. But Leigh already knew. She knew what she couldn’t guess before, what Pam thought of the two of them on the porch swing, Kara talking, Pam listening. Leigh didn’t have to guess anymore. She could hear the words come out of her daughter’s mouth as clearly as they’d just come out of her own.”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life

“Perhaps all the difficulties of pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering in the early years wouldn’t”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life

“she also knew that the sadness she felt while pregnant, for strangers, for the entire world, did not feel like hormones so much as a kind of elevated consciousness, a heightened sensitivity to truth.”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life

“If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life

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Popular quotes

“With knowledge of the diagrams you will be able to interpret many of the new feelings, sensations, ideas that will come to your mind, and transfer this interpretation to the ordinary mind. Without diagrams you will not be able to do it. They are the intermediate language which will connect the language of the higher emotional centre with our ordinary centres. At the same time this language is a kind of ladder by which we can climb from ordinary thinking to the thinking of higher emotional centre.”
― P.D. Ouspensky, quote from The Fourth Way

“The males (of the Hutchinson family that included both religious dissenter Anne and immensely wealthy and politically connected Thomas) were merchants who sought salvation through commerce.”
― H.W. Brands, quote from The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

“That’s right: Never underestimate the power of a good laugh. It can stop some of the fiercest middle-school monsters.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life

“توجد في داخل كل إنسان حياة بكل معانيها الوجودية:
في داخل كل منا جزء من رغبة في الكرامة البشرية, والشرف الأخلاقي, والخبرات الوجودية الحرة, وكمال العالم.
لكن لدى كل منا في نفس الوقت وبدرجات متفاوتة القدرة على التأقلم مع الحياة المزيفة, كلنا بطريقة ما يسقط في المادية الفاحشة والمصلحة الشخصية, في كل منا شيء من رغبة في الذوبات في جمع مجهول, ينساب معه بسعادة عبر مجرى حياة زائفة.
فالأمر ليس إذن صراع بين هويتين.
إنه شيء أسوأ من ذلك: إنها أزمة الهوية نفسها.”
― Václav Havel, quote from The Power of the Powerless

“A good basic guideline for our speech is to reflect on whether what we are saying is both true and useful. There may be times when we are honest in what we say, but our words are too brutal or harsh. And there may be other times when we are deliberately being kind with the words we choose, but what we are saying is not totally true.”
― Noah Levine, quote from Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

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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.