“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
Laura Moriarty
Born place: in Honolulu, Hawaii, The United States
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“As I scrubbed the floor I was scrubbing part of the world. And I was scrubbing my mind to make it clear. It was work that made me think clear, and it was work that made me humble. I could never talk fast, and I could never say what I meant to people, or tell them what they meant to me. My tongue was loosened by my feelings. It was with my hands and with my back and shoulders that I could say how I felt. I had to talk with my arms and my strong hands.”
― Robert Morgan, quote from Gap Creek
“If we hope to go anywhere or develop ourselves in any way, we can only step from where we are standing. If we don't really know where we are standing... We may only go in circles...”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, quote from Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
“Our lives can only hold so much. If they’re filled with one thing, they can’t be filled with another. We ought to do a lot of thinking about what we want to fill them with.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, quote from Betsy Was a Junior
“Then she said, "Thorfinn!" quickly, and moved to him; but had hardly got to his side before he loosed his fingers and thumbs and plunged them down to the mattress like spear-points.
"No!Macbeth. Macbeth. Macbeth!" the name reached her like sling-shot.
Groa said, "They are the same man. I should know. I married both.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from King Hereafter
“Have we not already seen enough of the fallacy and extravagance of those idle theories which have amused us with promises of an exemption from the imperfections, weaknesses and evils incident to society in every shape?”
― Alexander Hamilton, quote from The Federalist Papers
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Heaven Has No Favori...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.
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