Amanda > Amanda's Quotes

“She simply set firm rules for her private life and never deviated from them. The full impact of Bess Truman’s contribution to the history of America, and, indeed, of the world, will probably never be measured. Only she can supply the details, and I’m sure that she won’t. Her keen intelligence, calm reasoning, and unswerving devotion to her husband were rarely revealed to the public”
― J.B. West, Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies

“Every single parent teetering on poverty does this. We work, we love, we do. And the stress of it all, the exhaustion, leaves us hollowed. Scraped out. Ghosts of our former selves.”
― Stephanie Land, Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive

“As a poor person, I was not accustomed to looking past the month, week, or sometimes hour. I compartmentalized my life the same way I cleaned every room of every house—left to right, top to bottom. Whether on paper or in my mind, the problems I had to deal with first—the car repair, the court date, the empty cupboards—went at the top, on the left. The next pressing issue went next to it, on the right. I’d focus on one problem at a time, working left to right, top to bottom. That shortsightedness kept me from getting overwhelmed, but it also kept me from dreaming.”
― Stephanie Land, Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive

“After years of living in the absence of friendliness, after the toxicity with my family, losing my friends, the unstable housing and black mold, my invisibility as a maid, I was starved for kindness. I was hungry for people to notice me, to start conversations with me, to accept me. I was hungry in a way I’d never been in my entire life.”
― Stephanie Land, Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive

“In grief all the little flaws of those we loved are colored over.”
― Ashley Saunders, The Rule of One

“The Common remains alive only where the government could never hope to censor,” she says, placing her hand over her chest. “Inside of those who still resist.”
― Ashley Saunders, The Rule of One

“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive, and will come forth later, in uglier ways. —SIGMUND FREUD”
― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

“Being alive begin to seem like a awful strain.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“What the mind don’t ’member, the heart still know. Love, the strongest thang of all. Stronger than all the rest.”
― Lisa Wingate, Before We Were Yours

“Life is not unlike cinema. Each scene has its own music, and the music is created for the scene, woven to it in ways we do not understand. No matter how much we may love the melody of a bygone day or imagine the song of a future one, we must dance within the music of today, or we will always be out of step, stumbling around in something that doesn’t suit the moment.”
― Lisa Wingate, Before We Were Yours

“Story people are a bit like real people––no matter where their humble beginnings may lie, their journeys are shaped by family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and all manner of acquaintances. Some encourage them, some guide them, some offer them unconditional love, some teach them, some challenge them to be their best. This story, like most stories, owes its existence to a village of unique and generous individuals.”
― Lisa Wingate, Before We Were Yours

“unscientific theories, e.g. big dogs were kept by people who lived in little houses and vice versa. Clients who said “spare no expense” never paid their bills, ever. When I asked my way in the Dales and was told “you can’t miss it,” I knew I’d soon be hopelessly lost.) I had begun to wonder if perhaps country folk, despite their closer contact with fundamental things, were perhaps more susceptible than city people.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small

“AS I CRAWLED INTO bed and put my arm around Helen it occurred to me, not for the first time, that there are few pleasures in this world to compare with snuggling up to a nice woman when you are half frozen.”
― James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small

“Sometimes, at the dinner table, my mother would say to my father: ‘I’m so happy I met you.’ And my father would lean towards me and whisper, loud enough for my mother to hear: ‘You know, if they brought ten truckloads of women for me and asked me to choose someone else, I would reject them all and choose your mother.”
― Hyeonseo Lee, The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea

“Kindness toward strangers is rare in North Korea. There is risk in helping others. The irony was that by forcing us to be good citizens, the state made accusers and informers of us all. The episode was so unusual that my mother was to recall it many times, saying how thankful she was to that man, and to the passengers. A few years later, when the country entered its darkest period, we would remember him. Kind people who put others before themselves would be the first to die. It was the ruthless and the selfish who would survive.”
― Hyeonseo Lee, The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea

“One of the main reasons that distinctions between oppressor and victim are blurred in North Korea is that no one there has any concept of rights. To know that your rights are being abused, or that you are abusing someone else’s, you first have to know that you have them, and what they are.”
― Hyeonseo Lee, The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea

“the historian Andrei Lankov put it, a regime that’s willing to kill as many people as it takes to stay in power tends to stay in power for a very long time.”
― Hyeonseo Lee, The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea

“Once a story you’ve regarded as true has turned false, you begin suspecting all stories.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not supposed to know it.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Testaments

“The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

“In fact, there is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can’t otherwise see; you hear things you can’t otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

“A century ago, life screwed that poor man and me because we were too young, and now they want to do the same thing because we are too old.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“Nowhere is the sky so blue, the grass so green, the sunshine so bright, the shade so welcome, as right here, now, today.”
― Lulu Miller, Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

“I’m feeling stupid. I’m feeling brave because I’m feeling stupid. My words wear no parachutes as they fall out of my mouth.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“A white bird with streaks of gold like a crown atop its head. It’s flying.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“And I think people become who they really are when things get rough. I’ve seen it firsthand. With myself, my parents, with society, even.”
― Tahereh Mafi, Ignite Me

“Although she'd never believe it, those lines in Gillian's face are the most beautiful part about her. They reveal what she's gone through and what she's survived and who exactly she is, deep inside.”
― Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic

“Smartphones engage in disruptive behaviors that have traditionally been performed only by extremely annoying people. What’s”
― Catherine Price, How to Break Up with Your Phone, Revised Edition: The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan

“Mindfulness is about seeing the world more clearly”—including ourselves.”
― Catherine Price, How to Break Up with Your Phone, Revised Edition: The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan

“busy ourselves trying not to be lonely, trying to find purpose in careers, and lovers, and children, but at any moment, those things we work so hard to possess could be taken from us. I feel better knowing I’m not alone, that the whole world is as fragile and lonely as I am.”
― Tarryn Fisher, The Wives