Rachel Thompson > Quotes

“She wondered If I had woken up, would I have smelled his sadness, his desperation, and his detachment?

His death, her breath.

He told her once, she remembers, these two words have no other rhyme but each other.

If she could go back, she thinks --

She would open her eyes, instead of her heart.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Pieces

“Women have rooms inside of us men cannot fathom.

It’s where we store the depths of the hurt we’ve been dealt.

Where we store the deep love we never want to lose.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Pieces

“I gave my heart to a man who loved me, who wanted to be with me. Who ultimately was afraid of all I offered.
I didn’t understand why he sabotaged our future at the time – cheating on me, again, as we were making final plans to move in together. By the time he came over to smooth talk his way out of it, I was done. No more crying. Even my tears had given up on him. I’d already moved on, his cheating was simply the key left in the mailbox.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Pieces

“Silence is one of worst, most vocal enemies, yet people go through many bouts of depression not sharing what is happening. People don’t understand that, but as someone who suffers from it, I can tell you that it’s difficult to be objective about the gray.

I described depression to my therapist as a misty fog that surrounds me, heavy on my shoulders, pervading everything and nothing at all. I liken depression to a bird stealing into the depths of your soul, pecking at your disposition until nothing is left.

And that is when you break into pieces.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Pieces

“In a surreal gift from the universe, time both stands still and flies past you in that singular moment when you find out someone you once loved is gone.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Pieces

“Some events are so harrowing, they either shape who we become or we move past them. They either break us entirely, or we pick up the pieces and put ourselves back together, altered but not shattered.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Pieces

“Like a butterfly in glass, I want to fly away to you but the invisible walls contain me. It’s not time.

Hard to accept when I feel your words calling to me.

Your soul beckoning me with its pull.

Come to me, you say in one breath; stay, you say in another.

I taste your lips on mine and pray I make my way to you

As a butterfly chases its freedom.

So will I.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Pieces

“This is a book about fracture. About the experiences that make up a life. About the pieces of me.

Delving into naked emotion is a terrifying proposition. Digging into our souls to look for answers that may not be there is a ledge most of us avoid.

And yet, here I am.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Pieces

“I only wish I’d known night would fall on our tomorrows.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Pieces

“I own my fear, but my fear does not own me.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Pieces

“When he pulled out his gun weighted with a meaning I couldn’t quite comprehend, placing it silently in my hand, I understood that my words didn’t matter to a man intent on speaking the language of the unforgiven.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Places: A Memoir of Abuse

“My world, created by glass and flame in the birth of your heat, implodes inside the shadowed walls of my heart.

I swallowed the shards you gave me, your eyes on mine.

Nothing is easy.

I wait, feeling your hands holding the shattered pieces of my soul together in the molten, darkest recesses of the heart you claimed, unwilling to give up.

I am inside you, waiting to come out.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Pieces

“I still can’t wrap my mind around crossing that line of human behavior – civilized people punching and fighting, making violence their communication of choice.

Is it because I’m a woman, I’ve never considered hitting someone who acted inappropriately? Even one of my best male friends, a gentle man, a believer in spirit and mankind, has thrown a few punches in his time.

As a writer, my weapons are words. The thought of hurting someone physically to prove my point has never and will never be an option for me. Well, let me amend that: if someone hurt my child in front of me, tiger-mother’s claws would come out.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Pieces

“I found what you will never see: that my love resides on the other side of words.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Places: A Memoir of Abuse

“Writers are always alone, even in a room bursting with noises of the familiar.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Places: A Memoir of Abuse

“Life is hard, but living it doesn’t have to be.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Pieces: A Memoir of Abuse

“A MAN can never find anything in the refrigerator without your help, even if it is right in front of him. This is called Refrigeratoritis in my home.”
― Rachel Thompson, A Walk in the Snark

“But here’s my secret, what I think has gotten my husband and I through over twenty years, my sister through almost thirty, and my folks through almost over fifty: humor. We laugh at ourselves, each other, at pretty much everything.”
― Rachel Thompson, The Mancode: Exposed

“not telling us and thinking they have, which is a trait I refer to as Manesia).”
― Rachel Thompson, The Mancode: Exposed

“It’s also where I keep my secret stash of milk chocolate bars that nobody knows about.”
― Rachel Thompson, The Mancode: Exposed

“poor Andy Dick.”
― Rachel Thompson, The Mancode: Exposed

“1972, comedian Jerry Lewis took a huge departure from his traditional comedic roles when he directed and starred in The Day the Clown Died.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Pieces

“Men are fixers. They see women crying so they bring in their toolbox and follow Steps 1, 2, 3, and 4 to make it better. Yet they can’t understand why there are no directions on the Internet for Dealing with a Crying Female and even if there were, why they’re not working, dammit! And, finally, why scratching their balls while staring at us helplessly isn’t helping matters.”
― Rachel Thompson, The Mancode: Exposed

“PAIN, NOT UNLIKE CLAY, stretches and molds us into someone we never knew existed. There’s beauty in that. Beauty most people can’t, don’t want to, or are afraid to see. Every scar we carry, physical or emotional, is unique. Nobody’s pain feels exactly the same because I can’t experience what you have.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Places: A Memoir of Abuse

“Our vulnerabilities are what connect us and ultimately, what bonds us.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Places: A Memoir of Abuse

“If you like biking or running, food or movies, bare-naked horseback riding while listening to Phil Collins (questionable, but I knew someone who knew someone),”
― Rachel Thompson, The Mancode: Exposed

“Our subconscious remembers what we willingly shove aside. It can take years to undo damage to our self-esteem. And guess what? I don’t blame him. Okay, I do…maybe a little.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Pieces

“Every chick in a long-term relationship will agree that men have selective hearing.”
― Rachel Thompson, A Walk in the Snark

“See, he’d be different from RENT-A-HUSBAND ‘cause he’d be there to cater to my physical needs (if you’ve ever lived with a woman, you know that chocolate counts as a physical need), like sore muscles and stress. Whereas, the rental husband is more like the Honey-Do guy, who grocery shops and fixes stuff.”
― Rachel Thompson, The Mancode: Exposed

“I hear the beating of the waves you carry in your chest
That simple and that profound
This love that binds us
Folded in pieces inside love’s soul.”
― Rachel Thompson, Broken Places: A Memoir of Abuse