When You Were Older Quotes

“You know, you think about who you might meet and when they might come. You always know that someday a door will open and in will come the one you’ve waited for. And then the waiting is done. And the rest of your life can begin. And the minute I looked up and saw you there, I thought, There he is.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“You can only wrestle with something for just so long. Then you have to break in one direction or another. Just to end the wrestling. Something has to give.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“There’s no beginning, middle and end to that experience. The split second it happens, it’s happened. In its entirety. The only time that really elapses is the time it takes you to catch up. To absorb what just happened to you. And nobody ever thinks it’s going to unhappen. Do they?”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“Don’t you wonder sometimes why so much gets heaped on certain people?” I almost told the truth. That truth being, “I wouldn’t dare.” I wouldn’t dare dwell on a thing like that. I try to look forward in my life. Because what’s behind me is a little hard to take.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“What does it mean when someone loses the use of most of his brain, and it makes him more kind?”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“you from putting it completely behind you.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“She placed the judgment of her humans ahead of her own, as a matter of courtesy and pride, even if she was always right and we were always wrong. Good dogs are like that.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“By the time I’d managed to pull up to the curb, my heart was pounding so hard I thought it might burst free. And not in a good way. I couldn’t breathe, which didn’t help. And I thought, Why doesn’t love feel good? Why does it make you feel like you’re about to die?”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“People can do all manner of things if it’s important enough. If a mother can lift a car off her son, maybe she can die at just the right time to save him.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“What do you think of them?” “They’re fine. Why ask them to be shorter?”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“Ben prioritizes my sorrow over his own.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“Life just rolls on, adjusting to whatever was subtracted.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“Picture yourself looking back on the decision ten or twenty years down the road. Let’s say you try it, and it doesn’t work out. How much will you regret it? Now let’s say you don’t try it, so you never know. Then how much regret?”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“War is always pointless. That’s what I think.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“Things change so fast. Life turns on a dime.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“There’s more to bagging groceries than you think. It’s not as easy as it looks. There’s a lot to know.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“When anything is very bad, usually the method to fix it is also bad, and keeps you from putting it completely behind you.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“Speed showering. Speed shaving. Speed dressing. Then it hit me. What a waste of energy. It was all for nothing. I was going to miss that meeting no matter what I did. I could be on the platform right now, waiting for the PATH train, and it would still be a no-go. I could be on the train, heading out of the station, and it still wouldn’t work. So I took a minute for four or five gulps of too-hot coffee, which had already brewed on a timer. I wanted to call Sturgis and tell him I’d be late and I was sorry. But by then it was almost 8:35 a.m., and I thought it would be worse to interrupt his meeting. Crap. Crap. Crap. This was the worst. The absolute worst. The worst possible thing that could have happened to me. The job meant more to me than anything, than my own life, than the world. Why did I keep screwing up like this?”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“Sometimes you have to close yourself up. Shut the portals into the places inside you that still know how to feel. Because there’s just nothing you can do.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“You never know. In a world like this, you never know what’s possible. So I figure, don’t say it’s possible, because you don’t know. But, then again, don’t say it’s not possible. Because you don’t know that, either.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“I don’t know if war is always pointless,” she said. “I know it’s always tragic.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“Suddenly I wanted to think like everyone else seemed to think. That military retaliation was honorable and just. But that’s only wanting. War is always pointless.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“I didn’t sleep well that night. I lost most of the night thinking about it. What does it mean when someone loses the use of most of his brain, and it makes him more kind?”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“She still didn’t like the idea. But she wouldn’t question me again. She placed the judgment of her humans ahead of her own, as a matter of courtesy and pride, even if she was always right and we were always wrong. Good dogs are like that.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“And I knew that my only way through this mass of simultaneous future outcomes was to hold tight to the idea that it was possible to get to OK from where we were now. Not assured. Just possible.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“Part of resetting your life is accepting where you are in your life right now.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older

“Once you misplace the ability to be yourself without thinking about it, without second-guessing it, you’re pretty well cooked.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, When You Were Older