The Story of Beautiful Girl Quotes

“A person comes into the world with a fist-and a grasp. Yes, we are built to fight one another, but also to embrace. How cleverly we are created.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“There were two kinds of students who liked the library: those who devoured one book after another and those who savored the same book repeatedly. Now she understood those rereaders differently ... she realized it was not the rereading that led to fresh insights. It was the rereader-- because when a person is changing inside, there are inevitably new things to see.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“Silence made space for other people's words, which was important for those who needed to be listened to.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“There are two kinds of hope: the kind you couldn't do anything about and the kind you could. And even if the kind you could do something about wasn't what you'd originally wanted, it was still worth doing. A rainy day is better than no day. A small happiness can make a big sadness less sad.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“A rainy day can actually be a very important day. And a small hope isn't really small if it makes a lost hope less sad.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“She felt so lovely in his hands. She felt so loved in his eyes.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“How many other lives are hidden, and hearts are seeking? How many would give anything in the world to be held by the person they love?”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“A small happiness can make a big sadness less sad.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“she realized it was not the rereading that led to fresh insights. It was the rereader—because when a person is changing inside, there are inevitably new things to see”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“...she had wondered which was worse: the sudden good-bye you know is a good-bye or the long good-bye you have to guess.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“Sometimes you think you know what you want, she said, hugging her children, until you see how much more you can have.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“But never had come first.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“Follow your inclination. It will take you to the thoughts you'd never known you'd had.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“And Lynnie understood. There were two kinds of hope: the kind you couldn't do anything about and the kind you could. And even if the kind you could do something about wasn't what you'd originally wanted, it was still worth doing. A rainy day is better than no day. A small happiness can make a big sadness less sad.
p 313

"The sky was crying outside, and as she watched the drops come down, she thought: A rainy day can actually be a very important day. And a small hope isn't really small if it makes a lost hope less sad."
p 318

Lynnie about the lost hope of finding Homan, the hope of seeing the lighthouse/connecting with her daughter and how selling her art work was doing something about it.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“He thought that maybe when you're making your way forward into your life, it just looks higgledy-piggledy, the way, if you were a fly walking across one of Beautiful Girl's drawings all you'd be able to see was green, then blue, then yellow. Only if you got in the air before the swat came down would you see the colors belonged to a big drawing, with the green for this part of the picture, the blue and yellow for others, every color being just where if was meant to be. Could that be what life was?”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“Well, ain't that just the way of the world. Everything come to an end, whether you wants it to or not. All that nature out there: over. The Snare: dead and gone. Even a love that make a man giddy and romantic, that give him a hope and joy he never known, that brave him into taking a slingshot to the impossible and bringing it almost complete to its knees -- even a love like that come to an end. Life just ashes to ashes and dust to dust. And there is nothing you can do about it neither. (Homan)”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“There were two kinds of hope: the kind you couldn’t do anything about and the kind you could. And even if the kind you could do something about wasn’t what you’d originally wanted, it was still worth doing. A rainy day is better than no day. A small happiness can make a big sadness less sad.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“How many others are out there? How many other lives are hidden, and hearts are seeking? How many would give anything in the world to be held by the person they love?”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“When change happened to an individual, it happened to everyone around her - sometimes in ways she wished for, though sometimes in ways she wished against"
Lynnie p 228-229”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“Martha sat back. She felt her chest heaving, and in the silence that followed, she looked into Julia’s eyes and saw, past the challenging stance, the self-loathing, the effects of the wine, Lynnie. And Martha knew, as she hadn’t until now, why she couldn’t tell Julia the whole story. It wasn’t only because Martha wanted to restrain herself from teaching Julia a harsh lesson or because she wanted Julia to be grateful for her sacrifices. It was because Julia’s low regard for herself had taken her into misguided friendships, petty crime, and, now, bigoted words. Maybe someday she’d be ready for the truth, but not when she thought so disparagingly, so dismissively, about people like her very own parents.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“The reactions of others were actually another lesson she'd learned about change. When change happened to an individual, it happened to everyone around her - sometimes in ways she wished for, though sometimes in ways she wished against.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“A rainy day can actually be a very important day. And a small hope isn’t really small if it makes a lost hope less sad.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“Martha giggled; the baby was holding her. Astounding. A person comes into the world with a fist—and a grasp, she thought. Yes, we are built to fight one another, but also to embrace. How cleverly we are created.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“He could not talk himself out of pain any longer. He had no one to be strong for. So finally, he cried. He cried with deep sobs, head bent to the ground, palms pressed to his eyes. He cried so hard that sorrow rushed out of his face. He cried until he felt like the sea.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“. . . and Homan learned a language of pointing and jabbing and fist closing and finger flicking, frowning and shrugging and waving and saluting, brow raising and eye narrowing and lip pursing and head tilting. His anger ran off, and happiness moved in.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“two people: the one inside that was the truth, and the one outside that almost everyone believed him to be.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“Follow your inclination. It will take you to thoughts you’d never known you’d had.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“Self-pity is a worse adversary than ignorance.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“Raising kids isn't carpentry," he said "Forget measuring twice and cutting once, You measure over and over everyday”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“Follow your inclination. It will take you to thoughts you'd never know you'd had”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl