Daisy Darker

by Alice Feeney

Like my favorite resident says every time she sees me: the secret to having it all is knowing that you already do.

Families are like fingerprints; no two are the same, and they tend to leave their mark.

Pity fades with age, hate is lost and found, but guilt can last a lifetime.

Everyone’s life has uncharted waters—the places and people you didn’t quite manage to find—but when you feel as though you never will, it’s a special kind of sorrow. The unexplored oceans of our hearts and minds are normally the result of a lack of time and trust in the dreams we dreamed as children. But adults forget how to believe that their dreams might still come true.

If I had the chance to iron out the creases in my life before it ended, which ones would I choose to smooth over? Which points and pleats would I most want to unfold so they could no longer dent the picture of the person I wished to be remembered as? Personally, I think that some wrinkles and stains on the fabric of our lives are there for a reason. A blank canvas might sound appealing, but it isn’t very interesting to look at.

Childhood is a race to find out who you really are, before you become the person you are going to be. Not everybody wins.

Doesn’t everyone wonder who they might have been if they weren’t who they were?

‘The future is a promise we can still choose whether to keep. The past is a promise we’ve already broken.’

If you can’t find your way back to Happy, Navigate to the place you know as Less Sad.

“There’s no need to be afraid of the dead. It’s the living you have to watch out for.”

Books will teach you anything you want to know, and they tend to be more honest than people.

“The only nobodies in this world are the people who pretend to be somebody; the people who think they are better than other people because of the way they choose to look, or speak, or vote, or pray, or love. People are not the same but different, they are different but the same.”

Albert Einstein once said that weak people revenge, strong people forgive, and intelligent people ignore. It was one of the few things he was wrong about. Success is the best revenge. Try to remember that.

“When you love someone, you can’t just turn it off, there isn’t a switch. Even if you hate someone that you once loved, there is still a little bit of love there. Love is like the soil that hate needs in order to grow. I think it’s rare in relationships to have one without the other.”

if you spend your present focusing on your past, you will never change your future.

Sometimes when people try too hard to be more than they are, they end up being less than they were.

The mind often tries to delete files it can’t process. When you remember, it’s as though whatever caused that grief happens to you all over again.

Grief can change a person into someone even they can’t recognize.

I kept asking myself the same question when you were taken from my life. Where does the love go when someone dies? Their last breath disappears into the atmosphere, their body gets buried in the ground, but where does the love go?

The people who truly love us never leave us.

I’ve always thought that dawn is the most beautiful time—shining a light on the clean slate of a new day. A chance to start again.