Glass Girl Quotes

“Here’s what I learned about life when we were going through that. We’re all human and mortal. We’re all going to suffer and die. But it’s how we are with each other during those times that proves God’s here with us.” He turned his hand over in mine and entwined our fingers. “He comes in through people. People who love us anyway. They jump right into the chaos with us and try to help us make sense of it. That’s what mercy is…it’s choosing to help, or forgive, or love even when it goes against all logic.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“1. All glass will break.
2. I am made of glass.
3. Therefore, I will break.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“But I understood, now, that we don’t live only for ourselves. We’re connected by millions of shared experiences and dreams and nightmares, all tied together with compassion.
I learned that even when we’re going through our darkest winter, spring is waiting to appear.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“I found I could only glance at him for tiny moments and then I had to look away. He was perfect enough to hurt my feelings for a long time, and I wanted to let him.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“Then let me be your mercy,” he said. “I’ll never be able to give you smart answers about why we suffer, but I can come into your world and try to be some kind of help to you.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“Uncommon anxiety came to us in common hours when other people were doing mundane things like taking out the trash or checking their phones. But there was nothing to be done for this. We couldn’t change who we were or what had happened.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“Everybody likes to be known. Heck, its why people roll their car window down when their favorite song comes on. They're telling everybody, 'Hey, hear this? This is me.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“We're connected by millions of shared experiences and dreams and nightmares, all tied together with compassion.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“We all think when we’re young that we want excitement and highs and passion. To hell with ordinary.”
I smiled and she chuckled. “But when we find ourselves in these adult bodies,” she said. “When we wise up a little, or get slapped in the face by life, we realize we just want all things to be equal.” She put the heels of her hands together near her heart like the Yoga prayer position. “And we want to understand them better.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“Sometimes, in the stillness of my room, my mom’s voice came to me, repeating things she’d said for months. Like, “My skin is melting off my face, isn’t it?” And, “My whole body feels dead from the crap they’re pouring into me. Do I look green to you?” And, “When I’m naked, I can see my heart beating.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“Most kids grow sullen and angry when they’re working through issues, but Thanet mustered up another kind of bull-headed strength. The kind that sees beyond circumstances to what really matters. How could anyone hurt a soul that lovely?”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“I tell her all the time,'whiskey is risky and it makes girls frisky.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“It was an oddly satisfying idea to feel bereft as I left my mother this time. We only feel bereft when we’re deprived of something meaningful.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“Meg,” he whispered. “It wouldn’t be real love if there weren’t the possibility for another response to him. If we couldn’t choose not to love him, then our love would be empty. That’s why there’s evil in this world, because there’s free choice in this world. He allows the one to prove the other.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“Every moment of our lives we make choices. Most we don’t even know we’re making, they’re so dull or routine or automatic. Some are beyond explanation—like my mom choosing Wyatt’s memory over Dad and me.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“I’d known cruelty in a school—cruelty that would keep these amateurs up all night. But this kind of scene—crowds batting around a person because they thought he was weak—happened to be my personal trigger.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“But I'm feeling like I'm tucking some paper around in the hole you left. The wind still whistles in, but I'm not as cold.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“He ran his hand from my wrist up to the crook of my elbow and then to my shoulder. “When I was a little kid, my dad would come to my room at night to say a prayer with me. He used to say, ‘Lord, We know there’s a little girl out there who’s meant for Henry. Please protect her and raise her up right.’” His voice changed to something slower and more country when he mimicked his dad. He smiled at the memory, and then he put his mouth near my ear and whispered. “You were that little girl.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“I could’ve gone on and on but the truth was all that mattered.
“My brother died because someone was jealous.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“With a damp palm, I turned the knob and cracked open the door. She was asleep in her freshly made bed. I can’t explain how relieved I felt for this simple mercy. She was here and safe on clean sheets.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“The ice cold fear I’d felt, not knowing if Wyatt was alive, pressed into the wall with other girls and surrounded by guys who were unspeakably brave, hit my body again in a wave. This was trauma—the gift that keeps on giving.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“We bumped into other silent lines of kids going in the same direction. We looked like we were much younger and our lines were headed to the cafeteria or recess or the carpool line. Or it could’ve been a fire drill. Except for the stone-faced police officers weaving between us with rifles.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“I finally understood why so much monkey business happened in the backs of buses. Put us in close proximity, with wheels spinning under us, and nothing to do but wait, we’re going to start thinking of lovely uses for our bodies. I don’t care who you are.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“When Dad was in the middle of a description of the hotel’s laundry facility, I interrupted. “Why haven’t you told me today, like you do every day, that Mom’s going to be better soon?”
He looked up then. His gaze locked with mine and held a promise that no matter what he said or didn’t say, he and I would ride this out together. “I haven’t told you that today, Meg, because I don’t know.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“I turned my ear toward the door because I heard him breathing. When you’re alone and afraid, the simple sound of the steady in and out of air being drawn by another person is good medicine.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“He’d had to fold his long legs into his desk. His boots had seen better days, and his jeans unraveled in a curiously irresistible way at the bottom. He didn’t look like anyone I’d ever seen before. He reminded me of an actor in an old Western—Rock Hudson in Giant—all dark intensity.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“I meant that the hatred of that July day in Nashville was alive and well on that horrible day in Pittsburgh. People hate others so they strike like snakes. It’s all connected—we’re all connected, bumping around into each other, some of us good, some bad, most a mixture. Every thought acted upon has consequences. Every one.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“Wyatt told me once that if tenderness were a disease, I’d be terminal.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“His room was dark until he switched on his desk lamp. I sat on the floor next to his bed and watched him counting clothes and considering shoes. He seemed so boyish right then—like he wished his mom would just come in and pack for him. I couldn’t possibly love him any more than I did at that moment.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl

“Next to the first Henry and Meg, Henry had written, “Promise?”
Well, that genie’s out of the bottle and there’s no stuffing her back in.”
― Laura Anderson Kurk, Glass Girl