Katherine Smith > Katherine's Quotes

“The church is like a swimming pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end.”
― John Shelby Spong, Eternal Life: A New Vision: Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell

“God is not a Christian, God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. All of those are human systems which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. I honor my tradition, I walk through my tradition, but I don't think my tradition defines God, I think it only points me to God.”
― John Shelby Spong

“Words were different when they lived inside of you.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I hated being volunteered. The problem with my life was that it was someone else's idea.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“The me I am is not the me I was.”
― Val Emmich, Dear Evan Hansen

“The effort to separate ourselves whether by race, creed, color, religion, or status is as costly to the separator as to those who would be separated.”
― Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don't Cry: A Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High

“Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“People just want to believe. Otherwise they would have to admit that life is just a random series of good and bad things that happen until one day you die.”
― Nicola Yoon, The Sun is Also a Star

“Maybe part of falling in love with someone else is also falling in love with yourself.”
― Nicola Yoon, The Sun Is Also a Star

“Books are the mile markers of my life. Some people have family photos or home movies to record their past. I’ve got books. Characters. For as long as I can remember, books have been my safe place.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Great Alone

“like all fairy tales, theirs was filled with thickets and dark places and broken dreams, and runaway girls.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Great Alone

“In the silence, Leni wondered if one person could ever really save another, or if it was the kind of thing you had to do for yourself.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Great Alone

“Now I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—What do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“failure is a feeling long before it’s an actual result.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“But love has to be stronger than hate, or there is no future for us.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I'd like to be known.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“Perhaps that’s why I find myself looking backward. The past has a clarity I can no longer see in the present.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“I know that grief, like regret, settles into our DNA and remains forever a part of us.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the concentration camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf. Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry and you give it to your friend.”
― Gerda Weissmann Klein, All But My Life

“I explained that when our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender friends aren’t welcome at the table, then we don’t feel welcome either, and that not every young adult gets married or has children, so we need to stop building our churches around categories and start building them around people.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

“Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. Imagine if every church became a place where we told one another the truth. We might just create sanctuary.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

“They reminded me that Christianity isn’t meant to simply be believed; it’s meant to be lived, shared, eaten, spoken, and enacted in the presence of other people. They reminded me that, try as I may, I can’t be a Christian on my own. I need a community. I need the church.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

“I’ve been convinced that LGBT Christians have a special role to play in teaching the church how to be Christian.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

“And sometimes, just showing up, burial spices in hand, is all it takes to witness a miracle.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

“I’m a Christian,” I said, “because Christianity names and addresses sin. It acknowledges the reality that the evil we observe in the world is also present within ourselves. It tells the truth about the human condition—that we’re not okay.” “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed,” instructed James, the brother of Jesus (James 5:16). At its best, the church functions much like a recovery group, a safe place where a bunch of struggling, imperfect people come together to speak difficult truths to one another. Sometimes the truth is we have sinned as individuals. Sometimes the truth is we have sinned corporately, as a people. Sometimes the truth is we’re hurting because of another person’s sin or as a result of forces beyond our control. Sometimes the truth is we’re just hurting, and we’re not even sure why.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

“I often wonder if the role of the clergy in this age is not to dispense information or guard the prestige of their authority, but rather to go first, to volunteer the truth about their sins, their dreams, their failures, and their fears in order to free others to do the same. Such an approach may repel the masses looking for easy answers from flawless leaders, but I think it might make more disciples of Jesus, and I think it might make healthier, happier pastors. There is a difference, after all, between preaching success and preaching resurrection. Our path is the muddier one.”
― Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church

“I’ve sometimes joked and said God doesn’t know very much math, because when you give to others, it should be that you are subtracting from yourself. But in this incredible kind of way—I’ve certainly found that to be the case so many times—you gave and it then seems like in fact you are making space for more to be given to you. “And”
― Dalai Lama, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World