“There is how we
were before, and how we are now, and the time between is spent choosing
which doors to open, and which to close.”
“Adversity in life does not rob your heart of beauty. It simply teaches it a new song to sing.”
“We live, we love. These are the choices we are given, to open doors or to close them. It is all we have, and it is enough”
“Things do not always work out as we have planned, do they? Sometimes the hardest thing is not to just survive the grief, but to step around it and move on. It helps if your suitcases are not so full.”
“There are no completely good or bad people. Everybody makes mistakes, or bad choices. It's how we live with them that make us the people we are.”
“Time is a funny thing. It can take some people a whole lifetime before they realize they've been playing tug-of-war all by themselves.”
“I've found that you can't measure happiness the way you measure yards in a race. You just learn to recognize it when it arrives so you can enjoy it while it lasts.”
“It still amazed me sometimes when I caught sight of myself in a mirror. I would be startled to see the stranger there, as if still expecting to see my blond hair and tight skin, my hands with long, straight fingers. Age was a thief, an insidious one who instead of robbing you at night while you slept took all of your possessions one by one and forced you to watch.”
“There was so much we didn't know, so much we would never know. The secrets of the dead are always kept.”
“But maybe everybody was like that, all of us living the lives we had to while dreaming of the lives we wanted.”
“We all make choices, Miss Szarka. And if it doesn't work out the way we wanted it to, we can spend a lifetime blaming ourselves or blaming others. Either way, we've spent a lifetime blaming instead of a lifetime doing other things...I think the possibilities for second chances are everywhere if we just look hard enough." Eve”
“Sometimes hope is all we have, and to lose that is to lose all.”
“...hearing again the words from the Gullah woman, All shut-eye ain't sleep; all good-bye ain't gone.”
“Must take care of de root for to heal de tree.”
“The feelings I had for my sister were jumbled together, like the monkeys in a barrel game we'd had as children. All the brightly colored monkeys with their curved arms tangled and entwined, so convoluted that it was almost impossible to separate them.”
“I was starting to realize how much the presence of a child could make adults act more like adults.”
“...feelings of hurt and betrayal and utter loss poured through me like batter hitting a hot skillet.”
“Madame LaFleur would say that you're more of a classical ballet dancer instead of a jazz dancer. But sometimes all you have to do is change costumes to become something different.”
“It's good to be a little nervous. God compensates those with a lack of talent with an overabundance of self-confidence. -Gigi”
“Don’t see the notes. See the music. See the story it is telling you. Allow the music to change you. Allow it to give you the courage to do whatever you need to”
“is how we were before, and how we are now,”
“is how we were before, and how we are now, and the time between is spent choosing which doors to open, and which to close.”
“Everyone needed to be reminded of the person he or she had once hoped to be.”
“Two for the past. For the one we wish we had and for the one we have to live with.”
“Is that what happened as a mother grew older? She saw her children as adults she could confide in, despite how painful or revealing the subject matter? It seemed, almost, that because I was an adult I’d suddenly ceased to be her child.”
“We see a world of abundance, not limits. In the midst of a great deal of talk about reducing the human ecological footprint, we offer a different vision. What if humans designed products and system that celebrate an abundance of human creativity, culture, and productivity? That are so intelligent and safe, our species leaves an ecological footprint to delight in, not lament?”
“On the first occasion Mrs Papagay had met her, there had been a discussion of the process of grief, and Mrs Jesse had nodded sagely, "I know that. I have felt that,' like a kind of tragic chorus. 'I have felt everything; I know everything. I don’t want any new emotion. I know what it is to feel like a stoan.”
“I think you should really really be sure you love someone + that they love you back before you get into a relationship.”
“The cancer had already spread to Laura’s liver and, considering her age, aggressive treatment wasn’t recommended; the doctors said she had about six months to live.”
“That was the hazard she’d face every day, here: not just the risk that she’d give in to temptation, but the risk that all the principles she’d chosen to define herself would come to seem like nothing but masochistic nonsense.”
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