Vanessa Middelhoek > Vanessa's Quotes

“Water flows from high places to low places. That is the nature of gravity. Emotions also seem to act according to gravity. When in the presence of someone with whom you have a bond, and to whom you have entrusted your feelings, it is hard to lie and get away with it. The truth just wants to come flowing out. This is especially the case when you are trying to hide your sadness or vulnerability. It is much easier to conceal sadness from a stranger, or from someone you don’t trust.”
― Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold

“At the end of the day, whether one returns to the past or travels to the future, the present doesn't change.”
― Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold

“I was so absorbed in the things that I couldn’t change, I forgot the most important thing.”
― Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold

“With the coffee in front of her, she closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. It was her moment of happiness.”
― Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold

“We are all flawed, complicated, wounded dreamers; we have more in common with one another than we don't. Sometimes making the world a better place just involves creating space for the people who are already in it.”
― Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey

“being a woman has meant being someone who gets talked over in conversations or ignored; someone who gets judged as a body instead of as a sentient soul; someone who, no matter who you are or what you are doing, always has to be on guard, lest someone else decide that you’re going to be his victim.”
― Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey

“We are so lucky to have our children, even for a little while, but we take them for granted. We make the stupid assumption that as long as we are here, they will be, too, though that’s never been part of the contract.”
― Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey

“I don't think it's an invisible chromosome, or the inability to get pregnant, or anything else, that makes people so cruel to transgender folks. I think what they hate is difference. What they hate is that the world is complicated in ways they can't understand. People want the world to be simple.”
― Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey

“there is still something about faith that I cannot let go of. I do not know what this world is, but I know that it contains miracles that I cannot explain, and the love that people have for each other is the biggest mystery of all.”
― Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey

“People always talk about how their love for you is unconditional. Then you reveal your most private self to them, and you find out how many conditions there are in unconditional love.”
― Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey

“wonder if it would be like being forced to wear size two clothes when you are a size twelve. You wouldn’t be able to move comfortably. You’d always be aware of the fact that something pinched. There would be wardrobe malfunctions and embarrassment when you thought people were looking at you oddly. You’d be thinking constantly about taking off the outfit just so you could breathe.”
― Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey

“The whole panorama makes me realize how small I am, in the grand scheme of things. How insignificant my problems are when you zoom out and out and out and see the whole of the world.”
― Jodi Picoult, Mad Honey

“There’s an old saying: The first lie wins. It’s not referring to the little white kind that tumble out with no thought; it refers to the big one. The one that changes the game. The one that is deliberate. The lie that sets the stage for everything that comes after it. And once the lie is told, it’s what most people believe to be true. The first lie has to be the strongest. The most important. The one that has to be told.”
― Ashley Elston, First Lie Wins

“You can tell a lot about a person by the way they act when they are left waiting too long.”
― Ashley Elston, First Lie Wins

“Blunt honesty has more value than blind worship”
― Ashley Elston, First Lie Wins

“She learned that no matter how hard you try, sometimes it’s not enough. She learned the only person you could trust, the only person you could truly rely on, was yourself.”
― Ashley Elston, First Lie Wins

“I had my chance.' He said it, retiring from a lifetime of wanting. 'I had my chance, and sometimes in life, there are no second chances. You look at what you have, not what you miss, and you move forward.”
― Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

“The hardest choices in life aren't between what's right and what's wrong but between what's right and what's best.”
― Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

“He'd do what he always did, find the sweet among the bitter.”
― Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

“I try not to live in the past...but...sometimes the past lives in me”
― Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

“I think I get it now. It doesn't matter how nice home is--it just matters that it feels like home.”
― Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

“After a lifetime of nods, frowns and stoic smiles, they were both fluent in emotional shorthand.”
― Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

“A book doesn't live when it's written. It lives when it's read.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Invisible Hour

“once a girl walked into a library she could never be controlled again.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Invisible Hour

“Turn someone into a reader and you turn the world around.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Invisible Hour

“IT WASN’T EASY TO walk away from the past, even when you locked it up in a box for which there was no key. Memories rattle around late at night, they claw at the latch, escaping when you least expect them to do so.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Invisible Hour

“He truly wished that for the next thousand years all government could be in the hands of women, for men had made such a mess of the world,”
― Alice Hoffman, The Invisible Hour

“Lost is not a hopeless place to be. It is a place of patience, of waiting. Lost does not mean gone for ever. Lost is a bridge between worlds, where the pain of our past can be transformed into power. You have always held the key to this special place, but now you are ready to unlock the door.”
― Evie Woods, The Lost Bookshop

“The thing about books,’ she said, ‘is that they help you to imagine a life bigger and better than you could ever dream of.”
― Evie Woods, The Lost Bookshop

“there was a young woman who came to the library, miles away from her true home. She read a story about a girl who had come to a fork in the road and was so afraid of making the wrong decision that she stayed where she was, huddled in the hollow of a tree. After several days, an old woman came along and told her a riddle. She asked, ‘What is something you create, even if you do nothing?’ The answer was a choice. Choosing not to do something was still a choice.”
― Evie Woods, The Lost Bookshop