Joan Concilio > Joan's Quotes

“Somewhere in this process you will come face-to-face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy. Your mind is a shrieking gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill utterly out of control and hopeless. No problem. You are not crazier than you were yesterday. It has always been this way and you just never noticed. You are also no crazier than everybody else around you. The only real difference is that you have confronted the situation they have not.”
― Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English

“Until finally he sees-- as it lies all around him-- the truth: it is space that makes stars.”
― Ben Loory

“I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.”
― Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist

“Once there was a man who was afraid of his shadow.

Then he met it.

Now he glows in the dark.”
― Ben Loory, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day

“Eventually the man comes to see that he has a mind, and that his mind is like a fist, wrapped tightly around a single thought. He cannot open the fist to look at the thought, for fear that it will fly away, but he knows that it is very important and that he must hang on to it, no matter what the cost.”
― Ben Loory, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day

“You have given me a thing I could never have imagined, before I knew you. It's like I had the word "book," and you put one in my hands. I had the world "game," and you taught me how to play. I had the word "life," and then you came along and said, "Oh! You mean this.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“A great truth comes over him: Trees fall with spectacular crashes. But planting is silent and growth is invisible.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“Watching the man, hard-of-hearing, hard-of-speech Patty learns that real joy consists of knowing that human wisdom counts less than the shimmer of beeches in a breeze. As certain as weather coming from the west, the things people know for sure will change. There is no knowing for a fact. The only dependable things are humility and looking.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“Her breakthrough comes as breakthroughs often do: by long and prepared accident.”
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

“Promise was like a precious stone, she told me: hypnotising, but after a while the weight of it could sink you.”
― Meg Haston, Paperweight

“Death is not an exact science, which is irritating for those of us who appreciate precision.”
― Meg Haston, Paperweight

“The thing was, I needed to be owned. I needed someone to say, This girl is mine. That´s what family is for, but mine was almost gone. There was no one to claim me but Eden and my sickness. So I gave myself to both.”
― Meg Haston, Paperweight

“The girl in the mirror was too much and not enough.”
― Meg Haston, Paperweight

“Every person should be able to choose her own particular brand of suffering.”
― Meg Haston, Paperweight

“Every time a couple moves they begin, if their attention is still drawn to one another, to see each other differently, for personalities are not a single immutable color, like white or blue, but rather illuminated screens, and the shades we reflect depend much on what is around us.”
― Mohsin Hamid, Exit West

“The maid said no, for she had a sense of the fragility of things, and she felt she was a small plant in a small patch of soil held between the rocks of a dry and windy place, and she was not wanted by the world, and here she was at least known, and she was tolerated, and that was a blessing.”
― Mohsin Hamid, Exit West

“I to the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.”
― William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors

“He knew he loved her; he knew it to his core. He loved her for her kindness, her ability to laugh both at him and at herself, and her intelligence. But most of all, he loved her for the feeling he had when he sat next to her on his couch in silence or woke up next to her in bed, that feeling of peace and happiness. That he was with someone who understood him and everything about him. That everything was right with the world.”
― Jasmine Guillory, The Proposal

“WAS THIS WHAT LOVE WAS? Being happy when you thought about someone; wanting to never stop thinking abou tthem, even when you were fighting; having every damn thing in the grocery store remind you of them, from diapers to sour cream; wanting to be a better writer and friend and person because of how they were and how they made you feel; wanting to be with them, all the time, even though you kept fighting it.”
― Jasmine Guillory, The Proposal

“Fondness warmed his gaze from the inside out, as if he was seeing exactly the person he wanted to see.”
― Christina Lauren, The Soulmate Equation

“It hit her in a sharp, startling truth: her whole life she had been put together wrong in one tiny, invisible, and critical way. And having that piece altered just enough for it to slide into place suddenly changed everything.”
― Christina Lauren, The Soulmate Equation

“That’s the key to marriage. You have to keep falling in love with every new version of each other, and it’s the best feeling in the whole world.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“When you love someone,” he said haltingly, “. . . you want to make this world look different for them. To give all the ugly stuff meaning, and amplify the good. That’s what you do. For your readers. For me. You make beautiful things, because you love the world, and maybe the world doesn’t always look how it does in your books, but . . . I think putting them out there, that changes the world a little bit. And the world can’t afford to lose that.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“Falling's the part that takes your breath away. It's the part when you can't believe the person standing in front of you both exists and happened to wander into your path. It's supposed to make you feel lucky to be alive, exactly when and where you are.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“I always like that thought, the way two people really did seem to grow into one. Or at least two overlapping parts, trees with tangled roots.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“You know that feeling, when you're watching someone sleep and you feel overwhelmed with joy that they exist?”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“I wanted to know whether you could ever fully know someone. If knowing how they were—how they moved and spoke and the faces they made and the things they tried not to look at—amounted to knowing them. Or if knowing things about them—where they’d been born, all the people they’d been, who they’d loved, the worlds they’d come from—added up to anything.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“And I hid the complicated feelings that came with trying to memorize someone you loved, just in case.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“My Happily Ever After was a strand of strung-together happy-for-nows, extending back not to just a year ago, but to thirty years before.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“I want to be the one who gives you what you deserve, and I want to sleep next to you every night and to be the one you complain about book stuff to, and I don’t think I ever could deserve any of that, and I know this thing between us isn’t a sure thing, but that’s what I want to aim for with you. Because I know no matter how long I get to love you, it will be worth whatever comes after.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read