The Book of Lost Friends

by Lisa Wingate

We all have scars.

The most important endeavors require a risk.”

‘We die once when the last breath leaves our bodies. We die a second time when the last person speaks our name.’ The first death is beyond our control, but the second one we can strive to prevent.”

No two readers read the same book, because we all see the words through different eyes, filter the story through different life experiences.”

I’m still here, in this outer realm of Dante’s inferno.

Into every life a little rain must fall.”

If there is magic in this world, it is contained in water, but I have always known that if there is magic in this world, it is contained in books.

there is no faster way to change your circumstance than to open a great book.

I always assume people’s behaviors are a reaction to something I’ve done, not that they’re just doing their thing.

I’m afraid of the great big everything that might be out there. Afraid of all I’m blind to. All I’ll never see.

A good heart can’t ever let the bad get in,

Life never is just about what you want. Seldom ever.

Well, that’s the problem with postulatin’, Hannibal. Brings up trouble that ain’t happened yet and likely won’t ever. Why bother with it?

everyone has history. Just because we’re not always happy with what’s true doesn’t mean we shouldn’t know it. It’s how we learn. It’s how we do better in the future. Hopefully, anyway.”

Be like holdin’ hope,

Tough times make good people and bad people.

“You gave me back a hope I surrendered long ago,”

I never imagined that teaching could be this way. I love this job. I love these kids.

I think they’re starting to love me back.

Every one of these kids is so unique. Filled with incredible stuff.

“We encourage vigorous debate. Civil debate is a healthy and democratic process. If one cannot make one’s point without yelling, name-calling, or insulting others, one should develop a stronger argument before speaking further.”

they’ve all come to the same end. They are dust beneath the soil.

The thing about so many of the kids here—country kids, town kids, a sad majority of these kids—is that their norm is constant drama, constant escalation. Conversations start, grow louder, get ugly, get personal. Insults fly and then lead to pushing, shoving, hair pulling, scratching, throwing punches, you name it.

Broken homes, broken neighborhoods, financial stress, substance abuse, hunger, dysfunctional relationship patterns. All too often, children in Augustine grow up in a pressure cooker.

I had the benefit of growing up in places where people around me—teachers, surrogate grandparents, babysitters, friends’ parents—decided I was worthy of their time, their interest.

They showed me what a stable life could look like. If they hadn’t bothered, how would I have even known there was another way to live? You can’t aspire to something you’ve never seen.

negativity has consequences and a huge cost. Making up for it takes three times the work.

When you’re a kid in a tough family situation, you’re painfully vulnerable to trying to fill the void with peers.

Future belongs to the man that faces hisself straight on.”

I ain’t ashamed. I toiled for my scars.

I ponder how we can put a man on the moon, fly shuttles back and forth to outer space, send probes to Mars, and yet we can’t traverse the boundaries in the human heart, fix what’s wrong. How can things still be this way?

Stories change people. History, real history, helps people understand each other, see each other from the inside out.

Most of the board members don’t have kids here. They’re business owners, lawyers, doctors in town. They serve on the board for prestige and for control. They want to regulate things like the district’s dividing lines and requests for property tax hikes and bond issues and student transfers to the district’s flagship school on the lake—things that might cost them money, because they own property and most of the businesses here.

to see that the life you create for yourself can be entirely different from the one you came from.

Quitters don’t build great things. Quitters don’t win this kind of war. You’re not defeated until you give up the fight,

We all have scars. It’s when you’re honest about them that you find the people who will love you in spite of your nicks and dents. Perhaps even because of them. The people who don’t? Those people aren’t the ones for you.

Eventually you have to stop letting people define you and start defining yourself.