The Warbler Quotes

“The world tells us this is what we should want: be a daughter, be a wife, be a mother. But you deserve to be you as well.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“you can say no even when it feels like the entire world is screaming “yes.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“The best thing about books, at least for me, is that favorites can feel like home. Yet they’re portable and replaceable. Any”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“Expectations cage us. What other people expect. What we think they expect. What we expect of ourselves. The rules that we think are unbreakable.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“I just want you to take a breath and think about this. The world tells us this is what we should want: be a daughter, be a wife, be a mother. But you deserve to be you as well.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“Also, if you hear voices in the stacks, don’t be alarmed. We’ve been having a problem with that.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“Regrets aren’t a thing you can avoid,” Mom said. “They’re just a part of life. Every time you say yes, you’re saying no to a dozen other things you could be doing.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“The best thing about books, at least for me, is that favorites can feel like home.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“I planned to visit the coffee shop first, but the bookstore has a cat.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“Enjoy today. Let tomorrow be. It’s the only piece of all of this we get to choose.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“Who really gets choice in their lives anyway? Other people’s choices hem you in.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“You know, song lyrics are something we never leave behind,” I say. “We carry them with us even when other memories fade.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“I wish I could snatch the memory out of her head and hoard it close to my heart.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“Our lives were shaped by other people’s expectations, other people’s dreams, other people’s choices. We are constrained by love—granted, it was misguided love, a belief that they knew best how our lives should take form.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“I’m thinking about the future.” “Don’t,” Lori suggested. “Enjoy today. Let tomorrow be. It’s the only piece of all of this we get to choose.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“This is just the way it is, this is the life you should lead, this is what you want, this is who you should be . . .”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“When she’d finally gone for a checkup, the doctor told her it was stress. She should eat more fruits and vegetables, take a walk, and try to eliminate worries—he’d essentially patted her on the head and dismissed her symptoms. She had believed him.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“Louis Sachar’s Holes. Across the aisle, Sharon Creech’s Walk Two Moons. All the Harry Potter books are there with well-worn spines, as are the Percy Jackson books. John Green. Oh God, I cried over so many of his books, and I laughed at Meg Cabot’s.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“Why did lawns exist at all? There was no point to growing a plant just so you could lop it off once a week so it looked like a carpet.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“It doesn’t surprise me that Owen lives with the books. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if he burrowed into the stacks, like a squirrel surrounded by acorns.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“All the friend groups have already formed. They don’t need anyone new. They don’t want anyone, except as a scapegoat. Yeah, it’s really fun when you get to be the new victim for whoever is feeling insecure.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“Maybe it’s jealousy. It was clear the woman’s children were grown, and she was missing when they were warm, squirming, sweet, delicious armfuls that clung to you as if you were a tree and they were a vine.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“She wondered what he’d say if he knew she’d rescued it from the trash. Would he be repulsed by it, or by her?”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“I am no one and anyone, searching for something that may not exist. I am the one you don’t notice and don’t remember. I am the one who always says goodbye.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“I wonder if he’s the type who reads to consume or be subsumed.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“know I’ve never set foot in here before, but all bookstores have the same kind of familiarity, a comforting sense of Here you’ll find what you need. Even if all it offers is an illusion that lasts for a few hundred pages. I’ll take the illusion every time.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“I’d rather be gradually forgotten, like a sunny afternoon indistinct from other summer days.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“But we get one life and the same set of hours in a day. Choosing one path means not choosing another. You can’t have both.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“bookstores have the same kind of familiarity, a comforting sense of Here you’ll find what you need. Even if all it offers is an illusion that lasts for a few hundred pages.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler

“This bus smells like stale coffee and peanut butter, mixed with the familiar odors of exhaust and urine that have seeped into the plastic upholstery of every bus I’ve ever been on. I have a window seat, which is the way I like it. I watch the houses flicker by and imagine the lives of the people who live in them. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends. I try to guess who is lonely and who wishes they were, based on only a glimpse:”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Warbler