Unwritten Quotes

“The library was magical because every time I walked through the door, there were literally thousands of voices ready and willing to have a conversation with me. I walked through the door, stared at all those stacks and bindings, and whispered, "Tell me a story.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“As strange as it sounds, broken people are fixed by other broken people. It's God's economy.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“...somewhere in that intersection of broken hearts and shattered souls... broken is not the end of things, but the beginning. Maybe broken is what happens before you become unbroken. What's more, maybe our broken pieces don't fit us... maybe my pieces are the very pieces needed to mend you and your pieces are the very pieces needed to mend me, but until we've been broken we don't have the pieces to mend each other. Maybe in the offering we discover the meaning, and value of being broken. Maybe...somewhere on the planet is another somebody standing around holding a bag of all the jagged, painful pieces of themselves and they can't get whole without you... Maybe love, the real kind, the kind only wished for in whispers and the kind our hearts are hardwired to want, is opening up the bag of you... And what's more, they don't cost you anything. They're free. I paid for them in the breaking... And because you're desperate, and you've tried most everything else, you empty my bag across the floor... and...find the one piece you've been missing... And when you insert that piece into the puzzle that had become you, it stops the hemorrhage, and for the first time in maybe your whole life, the wound starts to heal.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“All hearts have but one request. One simple, unspoken, undeniable need. One undeniable fear.

"To be known.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“Most people enter a library and don’t hear a thing. Eerie silence. I stand between the shelves and hear ten thousand conversations occurring all at once. Each ushering an invitation. The noise is raucous.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“Maybe broken is what happens before you become unbroken.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“It's the stuff we bury that hurts the most.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“Somebody told me when I first got in this business that people believe what they read until somebody prints something that contradicts it. Then they believe both.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“Of the six million species on the planet, only man makes language. Words. What's more--in evidence of the Divine--we string those symbols together and then write them down, where they take on a life of their own and breathe outside of us. Story is the bandage of the broken. Sutures of the shattered. The tappestry upon which we write our lives. Upon which we lay the bodies of our dying and the about-to-come-to-life. And if it's honest, true, hind nothing, revealing all, then it is a raging river and those who ride it find they have something to give--that they are not yet empty.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“All hearts have but one request. One simple, unspoken, undeniable need... To be known.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“The only true language in the world is a kiss... When the pleasure is simple and complete... in the offering.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“. . . No matter how screwed up the artist might be, there's still the chance that they can produce art that people like us hang on our wall and talk about long after their death. That the sum is greater than one part. That maybe one incident does not a life make.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“In my previous life, I learned something. I remember seeing it painted on the faces of the kids in the hospital. It is this: All hearts have but one request. One simple, unspoken, undeniable need. One undeniable fear.
To be known.
You can stamp it out. Kill it. Box it up and hem it in. Numb it and close the door. Bury it and nail it shut. Encase it in stone. But eventually, the needs of the heart will tear the door off the hinges, unearth it, and crack the stone. No prison ever built could house it. Those of us who think we can are lying to ourselves. And those next to us.
Hope never dies.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“...the sum is greater than one part. That maybe one incident does not a life make.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“(Water)... no matter how wide or deep you cut it...it has no memory. No scar... it's all future, no past.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“Truth is”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“scene in the river. Skinny-dipping. Brief nudity”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“Story is the bandage of the broken. Sutures of the shattered. The tapestry upon which we write our lives.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“All hearts have but one request. One simple, unspoken, undeniable need. One undeniable fear. To be known.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“was tired, and”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“Of the six million species on the planet, only man makes language. Words. What's more--in evidence of the Divine--we string those symbols together and then write them down, where they take on a life of their own and breathe outside of us. Story is the bandage of the broken. Sutures of the shattered. The tapestry upon which we write our lives. Upon which we lay the bodies of our dying and the about-to-come-to-life. And if it's honest, true, hind nothing, revealing all, then it is a raging river and those who ride it find they have something to give--that they are not yet empty.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“All hearts have but one request. One simple, unspoken, undeniable need. One undeniable fear. To be known. You can stamp it out. Kill it. Box it up and hem it in. Numb it and close the door. Bury it and nail it shut. Encase it in stone. But eventually, the needs of the heart will tear the door off the hinges, unearth it, and crack the stone. No prison ever built could house it. Those of us who think we can are lying to ourselves. And those next to us. Hope never dies.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“Naturally, reading led to writing. The opposite side of the same coin. I created words with my pen where people didn't giggle and point when I spoke. Where my parents tucked me in. Where I didn't stutter. Where I had chores assigned by a chart on the wall with my name on it. Where the seat at the table was mine and I was missed if the bell rang and I didn't fill it. Where I was always the prince who rescued the princess, the Hobbit who destroyed the ring, the boy who saved Narnia. Where I was Pip.

Sometimes I wrote all night. Filling pad after pad. True or make believe mattered little. Life was in the telling. In the exhale. Writing became the outlet for the one-sided conversation inside my head. The only place I knew complete expression. A thought encapsulated. A breath deep enough to fill me. Punctuation with certainty. Writing was how I worked out the goings on the inside. The act of making story made sense of what I couldn't make sense of. Like being an orphan and never being adopted.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“In school, I sat in the back, seldom raising my hand and never raising my voice. But the absence of verbal expression did not mean I was dull to the needs of others. Didn't mean I couldn't think and feel. Didn't absorb. I thought and felt just fine. Absorbed like a sponge. My peripheral vision was twenty-ten. I cried when strangers hurt. Laughed when others smiled.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“I used to think that a story was something special. That it was the one key that could unlock the broken places in us. What you hold in your hand is the story of a broken writer who attempted to kill himself and failed who meets a broken actress who attempted to kill herself and failed and somewhere in that intersection of cracked hearts and shattered souls, they find that maybe broken is not the end of things, but the beginning. Maybe broken is what happens before you become unbroken. What's more, maybe our broken pieces don't fit us. Maybe all of us are standing around with a bag of the stuff that used to be us and were wondering what to do with it and until we meet somebody else whose bag is full and heart empty we can't figure out what to do with our pieces. And standing there, face to face, my bag of me over my shoulder, and your bag of you over your shoulder, we figure out that maybe my pieces are the very pieces needed to mend me but until we've been broken we don't have the pieces to mend each other. Maybe in the offering we discover the meaning, and value, of being broken. Maybe checking out and retreating to an island is the most selfish thing the broken can do because somewhere on the planet is another somebody standing around holding a bag of all the jagged pieces of themselves and they cant get whole without you. There was a time in my life when I unselfishly offered my gift. Risked everything. Emptied myself. And when I did, I found that more bubbled up. The well never ran empty. But then, life tore my heart in two and I swore I'd never never offer it again. That I'd never risk that. Maybe love, the real kind only wished for in whispers and the kind our hearts are hardwired to want, is opening up your bag of you and risking the most painful statement ever uttered between the stretched edges of the universe: "This was once me." Maybe that in and of itself is the story.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“People believe what they read until someone prints something that contradicts it. Then they believe both.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“Man, or woman, is not made to be worshiped. We are not physically cut out for it. Life in the spotlight, on the pedestal, at the top of the world was a lonely, singular, desolate, soul-killing place.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“To die is nothing; but it is terrible not to live. —Victor Hugo, Les Misérables”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“If someone is bent on hurting herself, she’ll find a way to do it. She was a grown woman; sooner or later, she was responsible for herself.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten