Return to Willow Lake Quotes

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. —LAO TZU”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“What we remember from childhood we remember forever—permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen. —CYNTHIA OZICK, AMERICAN WRITER, B. 1928”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“loved coming here. It always felt so…safe. I was allowed to read any book I wanted. No one interrupted me, or if they did, it was done gently and with respect. I always wished the rest of the world would be run like a library.”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“Winston Churchill once said, “When you are going through hell, keep going.”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“your smile is my sunshine.”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“life was beautiful, that love and adventure were possible even when times were hard or frightening.”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“there are some things you don’t have a choice about, but there’s plenty you can choose. Like happiness. Like focusing on the positive.”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“There were only a few things that truly mattered. Family and friends and connection. Understanding and selfless love.”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“It seemed most of the town rallied around her, and the attention and caring seemed to boost Nina’s spirits. It gave Sonnet hope, too. There was something powerful in the energy that came from friends and neighbors and family.”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open. —Sir Francis Bacon, 1561-1626”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“They’d take Nina’s hair tonight, leaving only enough to cover her scalp—the k.d. lang look, Jezebel explained. Paige would weave the hair, strand by strand, into a wig modeled after Nina’s natural look. Sonnet nearly forgot to breathe, listening to Paige, whose eyes lit as she talked about her work.”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“When something is hard, but you do it anyway and get stronger because you did it, that’s building character.”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“To Sonnet, wearing castoff clothing was just another way to make her different from the other kids at school. As if she needed one more thing to make her different.”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“The list of side effects was lengthy and horrible. Sonnet had pored over it, along with all the other literature she’d hastily devoured, searching for grains of hope. The worst part of chemo started after the drugs were administered.”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“The Secret Art of Dr. Seuss?”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer—and the other seven will know her.”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“She realized that no matter how old she got or how far she traveled, she would never stop needing her mom. Now, staring her in the face, was the possibility of a loss so devastating Sonnet didn’t see how she could survive it.”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“Sonnet. What the hell kinda name is Sonnet?” “My mom was into Shakespeare when she had me—a May birthday. I’m named after Sonnet number 18. Do you know it?” “‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,’” Jezebel quoted, her voice taking on the cadence and tone of the syncopated sound that had made her famous. “‘Thou are more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath too short a date. Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines...”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake

“she was a digital geek. He’d always considered himself pretty good at multitasking, but she truly had a gift. At any given moment, she could juggle up to three devices. She might be tweeting on her iPhone while taking a call, at the same time scheduling something on her iPad and uploading a video to the internet.”
― Susan Wiggs, Return to Willow Lake