Cheri > Cheri's Quotes

“I don't know why it's called "getting lost." Even when you turn down the wrong street, when you find yourself at the dead end of a chain-link fence or a road that turnd to sand, you are somewhere. It just isn't where you expected to be.”
― Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

“There is a reason the word belonging has a synonym for want at its center; it is the human condition.”
― Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

“...when people we love make choices, we don't always understand them. But we can go on loving them, just the same. It isn't a matter of comprehension. It's forgiveness.”
― Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

“You can boil your life down to a single suitcase, if you desperately have to. Ask yourself what you really need, and it won't be what you imagine - you will easily toss aside unfinished work, and bills, and your daily calendar to make room for the pair of flannel pajamas you wear when it rains; and the stone your child gave you that is shaped like a heart; and the battered paperback you revisit every April because it was what you were reading the first time you fell in love. It turns out that what's important is not everything that you've accumulated all these years, but those few things you can carry with you.”
― Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

“Memories aren't stored in the heart or the head or even the soul, if you ask me, but in the spaces between any given two people.”
― Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

“Sometimes parents don't find what they're looking for it their child, so they plant seeds for what they'd like to grow there instead. I've witnessed this with the former hockey player who takes his son out to skate before he can even walk. Or in the mother who gave up her ballet dreams when she married, but now scrapes her daughter's hair into a bun and watched from the wings of the stage. We are not, as you'd expect, orchestrating their lives; we are not even trying for a second chance. We are hoping that if this one thing takes root, it might take up enough light and space to keep something else from developing in our children: the disappointment we've already lived.”
― Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

“If you choose to go looking for something, you'd better be ready for whatever it is you find. Because it may not be what you've been expecting.”
― Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

“There is a fine line between seeing something that's lost as missing, and seeing it as something that might be found.”
― Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

“The man began speaking to me. “When I was a boy, I worked as a messenger for the telegraph company. The sky was even darker from the mills then than it is today, and on bad days, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. To deliver my messages in the allotted time, I had to memorize the streets because I couldn’t always see where I was going. Sometimes, I’d have to assist deliverymen who’d lost their way by walking along the curb with one hand on their horses. From this experience, I learned that when you’ve gone astray, a helping hand will always emerge from the darkness.”
― Marie Benedict, Carnegie's Maid

“It is hard to accept something we wish were different. But when we do, we exchange pain for freedom.”
― Lisa Whittle, The Hard Good: Showing Up for God to Work in You When You Want to Shut Down

“It’s a big deal to share your grief with other people—to give them a glimpse of the pain you carry.”
― Katherine Center, Things You Save in a Fire

“But I have learned this. In every wound, there is a gift. Even the self-inflicted ones.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“Don’t leave it too long,” Marian admonished with a hint of gravity. “Time has a way of getting away from you. Things happen, and before you know it, you’ve missed your chance.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“Now and then, his hand wanders to mine, as if to reassure himself that I’m real, just as mine wanders to his cheek for the same reason. The connection we once felt is still there, like a current running between us,”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“That moment had been a kind of revelation for her, a reminder that the echoes a person leaves behind are the by-products of the choices she makes—and perhaps, more critically, that changing those echoes is always possible.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“I think we all think about weird things sometimes, but we’re never sure exactly how weird other people are, and we don’t want to give ourselves away for fear that we’re the strangest one in the room.”
― Gracie Ruth Mitchell, Juniper Bean Resorts to Murder

“We all keep the dead in our own ways; they never leave us. Not really. The parting of life from a body can never erase memories or teachings or likenesses.”
― Gracie Ruth Mitchell, Juniper Bean Resorts to Murder

“Easy at that age to envy the freedom of adults, who all seemed to enjoy life’s bounties. But those rewards were few and far between, and they would all learn that freedom came with a cost.”
― Mary Ellen Taylor, The Brighter the Light

“Ruth handed her a slice of bacon, as if that would fix everything, which it nearly did, judging by the look on her face.”
― Mary Ellen Taylor, The Brighter the Light

“Anyone who leaves home always carries a piece of it with them.”
― Mary Ellen Taylor, The Brighter the Light

“Will God send the wind?” Gwen asked when Thomas joined them. “If it pleases Him,” Thomas said. “And often it pleases Him to answer the prayers of the faithful.” “Does He not always answer prayers?” “I believe He does,” Thomas said. “But ’tis not always the answer we seek.” “I do not understand.” “The Lord knows what is best for us. He orders things according to His will and in such a way as will prosper us. Sometimes that means His answer to our prayer is no and sometimes it is ‘not yet.”
― Pegg Thomas, Freedom's Price

“Indeed. But worry is a sign of a lack of trust. Praying does more than worrying ever will.”
― Pegg Thomas, Freedom's Price

“Birth and death. It’s a woman’s lot to mark her world by those bookends.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Something Worth Doing: A Novel of an Early Suffragist

“But when she watched Clara Belle prance around the room, singing, she wondered why such joy should be kept only in the kitchen or in a church choir. Why were women with gifts not allowed to show them? And she could hear that her daughter had a gifted singing voice.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Something Worth Doing: A Novel of an Early Suffragist

“Writing something for publication caused a small conflict for her, which had kept her from submitting her poems. Her words in print would make her both a public and a private woman. She hadn’t yet shared that concern with anyone, including Ben. Writing had become a balm, different from being a reader.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Something Worth Doing: A Novel of an Early Suffragist

“Old brooms swept away dust and disappointment, but both came back.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Something Worth Doing: A Novel of an Early Suffragist

“Perhaps, Abigail thought, love is the only real balm to pain. Perhaps that was why her father had remarried so quickly. They could say “time heals all wounds,” but it wasn’t time, it was courage. It was being willing to risk love, after love had disappeared, after sorrow for whatever reason caught the heart up short and pierced it like an arrow.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Something Worth Doing: A Novel of an Early Suffragist

“Anger had always been a secondary emotion anyway. That’s what her mother had once told her, that fury rode on a fast horse charging through a relationship, trampling right over loss, disappointment, and grief. And if one wasn’t careful, wrath crushed love too. “Pay attention to those forgotten feelings when you lose your temper, Jenny. Those are the trio of emotions that if not recognized and dealt with, will surely bring a soul down and make ire the driving force in your days. Wounds must grow new flesh.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Something Worth Doing: A Novel of an Early Suffragist

“The things nearby, not the things afar Not what we seem but what we are These are the things that make or break that give the heart its joy or ache.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Something Worth Doing: A Novel of an Early Suffragist

“Brokenness changes our hearts. We either become bitter and angry”
― Gabrielle Meyer, For a Lifetime