Helen > Helen's Quotes

“I was young--so young--naive, isolated in a small world of safety and comfort too soon shattered by a phone call.”
― Helen Picca, The Last Frontier of the Fading West

“The combat during the war was only a part of the horror. When soldiers came home, they were faced with new challenges, new fights to be won. When the anti-war public sentiment was strong, as it was during the Vietnam war, our brave soldiers came home to expressions of disdain and revulsion instead of the respect and honor they deserved. But perhaps the ultimate betrayal for veterans, who willingly risked their lives when their government asked, was making them fight to prove their sicknesses and disabilities were caused by the war in order to receive the free medical treatment they needed, or to be compensated. These were the worst indignities of war.”
― Helen Picca, The Last Frontier of the Fading West

“It was like love, he thought, this crumbling chapel: it has been complicated, and therefore perfected, by what time had done to it”
― Julie Orringer, The Invisible Bridge

“I remembered my own 'past' life, buying into the whole success myth, running on that hamster wheel and going nowhere, except from pleasure to pleasure, to new things, new titles, more accomplishments, wrapped up in my egocentric world of superficiality.”
― Helen Picca, From the Hamster Wheel to Happiness in 10 Easy Steps

“I’ve been around men all my life. I don’t see how you all live with those things. They take more time and energy than a woman puts into her hair.”
― Margaret Verble, Maud's Line

“When women's stories aren't told, it suggests that women's lives don't matter. You know what does matter. Women lifting up other women.”
― Jodi Picoult, By Any Other Name

“There was such magic in language. It could bring you to tears, pull you to the edge of your seat, make you sigh with relief. It could draw you out of the world when you needed to escape, and at other times hold up a looking glass to the world as it was.”
― Jodi Picoult, By Any Other Name

“There once was a girl who became invisible so that her words might not be.”
― Jodi Picoult, By Any Other Name

“You have to let a bit of yourself bleed into your work.” And therein lay the problem: you couldn’t bleed without feeling the sting of the cut.”
― Jodi Picoult, By Any Other Name

“She has taught me patience. And as someone who has made their living through words, she has made me consider the dignity and persuasiveness of silence.”
― Chloe Dalton, Raising Hare: A Memoir

“we do not achieve all upon which we have set our hearts, or are beaten back by headwinds stronger than our desires, we too can lay up a while, watch the glitter on the grass, and renew our strength.”
― Chloe Dalton, Raising Hare: A Memoir

“to see a world in a grain of sand,” then perhaps we can see all nature in a hare: its simplicity and intricacy, fragility and glory, transience and beauty.”
― Chloe Dalton, Raising Hare: A Memoir

“I felt a new spirit of attentiveness to nature, no less wonderful for being entirely unoriginal, for as old as it is as a human experience, it was new to me.”
― Chloe Dalton, Raising Hare: A Memoir

“I was moved by the leveret’s dignity, the sense of well-being and calm it spread, and the simplicity of its life.”
― Chloe Dalton, Raising Hare: A Memoir