The Survival Kit Quotes

“Why is it that when we lose something big, we begin to lose everything else along with it?”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“It's difficult to stop trying with the one you love. You always hope that this next time might work, might change everything for the better.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“Life was fragile and love was, too. At any moment, even our happiest ones, our world could shatter and we wouldn’t see it coming. There was only more loss ahead, showing its ugly face when we least expected it.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“Yet little by little, I was also becoming the girl who was learning to live with this, all of it, letting it weave together with everything else, the good and the bad, as life moved forward, because that's what life did, regardless of whether we were ready for it or not.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“I've barely been able to think about anything else.'
'Other than...' He waited for me to finish.
'Kissing you, dummy,' I said.
'Really?'
'You shouldn't be that surprised,' I said.
He grinned. 'I'm just glad to know we're on the same page.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“The girl I am now, this girl--she survived.
I just needed a little help getting here.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“Now you," Grandma barks at him. "Yes, you, the invisible truck driver," she added, giving me a wicked grin. "Go stand next to Rose over there by the stone bench and smile like you mean it."
"Yes, ma'am," Will said.
"I am not to be called ma'am. My name is Maggie," she crabbed.
"Well, I also have a name. It's Will," he shot back.
Everyone stopped. We held our breath, waiting to see what Grandma would say next, but she just smiled at him. "I like this one, Rose. He's got spunk.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“The only thing that mattered was where I was and who I was with now, and when Will’s arms tightened around me I knew I was right where I needed to be all along.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“So what are you saying?" he asked.
"That we'd be crazy if we don't try again. That you are good for me, Will Doniger. You've proven it again and again."
He hesitated before he turned to me, words hovering on his lips.
"Tell me," I said. "What are you thinking?"
"That I love you, Rose. I have for a while."
I stopped breathing. "Me too. I love you, too.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“I wish I could bottle this,' I whispered.
'And drink it every morning.'
'And every day at lunch, and then again at dinner, and before bed.'
'You'd get sick of it,' he said.
I shook my head. 'Never.'
'Seriously,' he said. 'I want to freeze this moment.'
'Good thing you don't need to.'
'No?'
'Will Doniger, there is nothing in the entire universe that could make me stop wanting to be with you. And so on and so forth ad infinitum.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“I guess you could say my mind was injured and that’s why I didn’t play.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“The happier people become the more I noticed my sadness.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“This is what I imagined as I watched my kite, my beautiful kite, with its heart, its star and crayon, its note and flowers glowing from the light of the sun behind it. I felt love and grief and joy and all the emotions in between, letting my weathered broken heart knit itself back together again as I said goodbye to my mother.
Our imaginations are such gifts, she used to say.
So I thanked her for mine.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“(…) it never occurred to me that the girl I`d always been in high school could bend and shift and change without breaking altogether!”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“Music hadn`t always deepened my grief. For most of my sixteen years, it had healed my hurts, soothed them, given me a way to remember and the strength to move on.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“(…) I devised a list of things I needed to accomplish, all of them related to the Survival Kit and my mother. I was no longer going in any particular order or interpreting my tasks so literally and narrowly. They took on a life of their own, a life that I was giving them now.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“(…) I remembered the words in the note Mom left in my Survival Kit about using my imagination. Finally, after all this time, I felt its wheels begin to turn again, slowly at first, as if they were rusty, then with more confidence, as if someone had flipped on a switch. In the light of this awareness, I began to have faith that my mother was still with me, embedded and woven into this part of me I`d tried so hard to bury, the part that was most like her, my imagination. Even though she wasn`t here anymore, not literally, I could suddenly feel her everywhere, see her presence in everything, in the memories she created ad left for us, in the hope she had for our survival as a family, and that she`d packed into a series of brown paper lunch bags with big capital letters on the side.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“(…) I`d learned from experience that hugging someone only encouraged the person to cry even harder and I always wanted the tears to stop. But I was beginning to understand that there would always be sadness when it comes to our mother. A layer of sorrow was now knit through us so certain moments, memories, even new experiences, would tap it, and this was one of those moments. So instead of leaving Jim alone until the tears dried up and disappeared, I mustered to courage to reach out and wrap my arms around him, and when I did, he bent down and cried even harder into my shoulder.
I was willing to be his shoulder as long as he needed me to be.
This was how we survived, I was learning.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“(…) I would work my way toward the Rose from before, who laughed often, who felt things so deeply, who could move through the world brimming with feeling and emotion.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“I thought about love as we stood there, the day turning to dusk and the temperature dropping, and my heart, the one inside of me, become fuller.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“There were just little things and they still made me sad, but I become better at staying in my sadness and at resisting the urge to chase it away.”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit

“(…) I was out of practice with my emotions (…)”
― Donna Freitas, The Survival Kit