Dandelion Summer Quotes

“Dear Deborah,

Words do not come easily for so many men. We are taught to be strong, to provide, to put away our emotions. A father can work his way through his days and never see that his years are going by. If I could go back in time, I would say some things to that young father as he holds, somewhat uncertainly, his daughter for the very first time. These are the things I would say:

When you hear the first whimper in the night, go to the nursery leaving your wife sleeping. Rock in a chair, walk the floor, sing a lullaby so that she will know a man can be gentle.

When Mother is away for the evening, come home from work, do the babysitting. Learn to cook a hotdog or a pot of spaghetti, so that your daughter will know a man can serve another's needs.

When she performs in school plays or dances in recitals, arrive early, sit in the front seat, devote your full attention. Clap the loudest, so that she will know a man can have eyes only for her.

When she asks for a tree house, don't just build it, but build it with her. Sit high among the branches and talk about clouds, and caterpillars, and leaves. Ask her about her dreams and wait for her answers, so that she will know a man can listen.

When you pass by her door as she dresses for a date, tell her she is beautiful. Take her on a date yourself. Open doors, buy flowers, look her in the eye, so that she will know a man can respect her.

When she moves away from home, send a card, write a note, call on the phone. If something reminds you of her, take a minute to tell her, so that she will know a man can think of her even when she is away.

Tell her you love her, so that she will know a man can say the words.

If you hurt her, apologize, so that she will know a man can admit that he's wrong.

These seem like such small things, such a fraction of time in the course of two lives. But a thread does not require much space. It can be too fine for the eye to see, yet, it is the very thing that binds, that takes pieces and laces them into a whole.

Without it, there are tatters.

It is never too late for a man to learn to stitch, to begin mending.

These are the things I would tell that young father, if I could.

A daughter grown up quickly. There isn't time to waste.

I love you,
Dad”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“One of the secrets to life, Epiphany, is to find your gifts and focus on those. Leave your liabilities in the dust of the road not taken. The world is an imperfect place. Everyone struggles. Successful people see trials as growth experiences, rather than stumbling blocks. You have everything you need for success. You're a beautiful young woman, and you're strong, and you have a clever mind. If you let anyone convince you otherwise, you steal from yourself.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“A person must have principles, Epiphany. That's the one thing no one can take from you. The only way you can lose your principles is to give them up. Remember that.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“You let a possibility into your mind, you let it into your life.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“Sooner or later, if you want to do what’s never been done, you have to find the courage to take the first step. Just like J. Norm said, Only impossible journeys achieve the impossible.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“Maybe not everyone got the mom who baked cupcakes and showed up at all the school parties. There weren’t enough of those to go around, so maybe God used other people, like Mrs. Lora and J. Norm, to make sure you learned how to shell a purple hull pea or find Saturn in the night sky.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“She looked around the room then, and her eyes got misty, and she said we kids oughta remember there was a time when some folks had it a lot harder than others. I couldn’t see how things were so different now.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“I would have lived more fully in the moment, realize how easily a perfect day can slip by unnoticed. Any day is the glory day if you choose to see the glory in it”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“If you wait until you can foresee everything, you'll never launch.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“Confidence is half the battle. You have to believe things will go according to plan, until events prove otherwise.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“The upscale neighborhoods in Blue Sky Hill weren't all lily white anymore, but you could be sure their kids didn't wear our kind of clothes, or get free lunches at the Summer Kitchen, or pick up used books and magazines down at the Book Basket store, or go to the public school. These days it wasn't about what color you were, but how much money you had. The same, only different. It was still people not wanting to be with people who weren't their kind.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“Flowers are just weeds somebody decided were special.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“That teacher’d probably never been a weed in her life. She didn’t know how it was to be someplace you’re not wanted. Weeds don’t care, is the good thing. They don’t need a fancy garden, or somebody petting on them, covering them when it’s cold, sprinkling them with drops of Miracle-Gro, or loving all over them. You give a weed a little crack in a sidewalk, and it’ll put down roots, and suck up water, and do its thing no matter what else happens. Weeds don’t need much from anybody. They can look after themselves. When you’re a weed, you can either die or you can push your way through the concrete and try to survive.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“Nothing happens by accident, Norman, she’d said. It’s all part of a larger plan.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“One thing that discovering my own history had taught me is that we must learn not to whip ourselves for the failures of others. When a mother cannot love and protect her children, it is not the children who are defective.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“That’s what I’d say in my essay about To Kill a Mockingbird, I decided. I’d make sure the English teacher knew that the story of Jem and Scout and Atticus Finch wasn’t just words someone made up in a book. There were people who lived it—people of all different”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“Kay,” I whispered, and I wondered why sometimes the people you wish you could understand the most are the ones you can’t understand at all.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“It’s funny how mistakes are so much clearer after you’ve already made them.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“was all right for life not to be perfect. If you let it, if you didn’t close yourself off from the chance for it, life could still be good. Better than good.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“Everything has to do with rockets. Launching a rocket is similar to any endeavor in life. You formulate your best plans prior to, but you must be aware that, at any moment, the unexpected may come along. Events can deviate from plan. If you wait until you can foresee everything, you’ll never launch. The best you can do is to aim high and plan for contingencies.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“So many things are impossible only because we limit ourselves to what others tell us we are capable of.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“We all make trade-offs to get what we want. But no matter what you stand to gain, when the thing you’re asked to trade is yourself, the price is too high.” What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“When I listened to the lady telling her story, I could relate to not being welcome someplace. I liked the idea that God might take that very thing that stunk the worst about your life and change it around into something good.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“Right after I started at this new school, the history teacher brought in an old lady to talk to us about segregation. The lady said there used to be places in Dallas where she just plain couldn’t go. She remembered how they used to have “colored day” at the state fair, and how in most of the stores, she couldn’t try on clothes unless she bought them first, and then if it didn’t fit she was stuck with it. She laughed and said, “But the Lord provides for those that’ll try, because that’s how I started my own business.” Her cheeks crinkled up and her eyes twinkled like two tiny black dots of fresh paint on an old piece of brown paper.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“We do not live in this world at random, bodies drifting through empty space, forming and colliding by mere chance; . . . Rather, we are like the dandelion seeds my brother cast into the summer sky, ferried along by He who guides the winds and stills the waters, our journeys a mystery to us, except in hindsight. Along the way, we find those we are meant to love and those who are meant to love us. We fashion our lives according to what we have known and what we have yet to learn. At times, each of us is the child in a burning house, escaping through tiny doors, dependent upon the grace of God and the kindness of strangers.
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Wherever our journeys may take us, whatever struggles they bring, one solid truth underlies all that is. . . . We are, each of us, meant to change the ocean and to be changed by it, to become new creations as we travel our paths, and answer our challenges, and live and relive our Camelots.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“It was all right for life not to be perfect. If you let it, if you didn't close yourself off from the chance for it, life could still be good. Better than good.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer

“We all make trade-offs to get what we want. But no matter what you stand to gain, when the thing you're asked to trade is yourself, the price is too high.”
― Lisa Wingate, Dandelion Summer