The Story She Left Behind Quotes

“It means the kind of love that obliterates all sense and logic and has the world appearing just as it is—completely and utterly magical. This word is the knowing that all things are one and that we are connected to all things—the love that created you and the love from which we came and the love to which we will one day return. The greatest love.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“Forgiveness is a whisper of possibility, of openness. It was an act of restoration, an act of healing, an act of empathy. Forgiveness, I understood, was only the beginning of what might come next, not the end of what had already happened.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“Dreams are so much more than that. They are visions of the future, they are whispers of our desires, they are hope. We cannot and we must not live without dreams, Clara.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“This wild world holds more than you can see; believe in make-believe.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“We stood facing each other and he told me, “There was once a great Irish warrior who was sent far across the land to retrieve the gold and treasure of a conquest. He took his most reliable and trustworthy fellows. After carrying the heavy treasure for miles and days, the great warrior sat on a rock and would not move. The fellows with him begged him to move and to carry faster, for the king was waiting for his gold.” He paused and I nudged him. “The warrior didn’t answer anyone. He sat and sat and sat. Days passed until he opened his eyes, and he told them it was time to go. ‘What were you waiting for?’ they all cried.” “What was he waiting for?” I asked, feeling a truth draw near, a tingle in my chest. “The warrior told the others: ‘We traveled too far too fast, and I waited for my soul to catch up.’ ”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“But dreams are dreams."
"Oh no, no," he said, and smiled at me. "Dreams are so much more than that. They are visions of the future, they are whispers of our desires, they are hope. We cannot and we must not live without dreams, Clara.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“Sometimes we don’t really want what we wish for.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“We cannot and we must not live without dreams, Clara.” I laughed. “Mr. Andrews, if I may ask,”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“Forgiveness is a whisper of possibility, of openness. It was an act of restoration, an act of healing, an act of empathy. Forgiveness, I understood,”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“You’re the place that I stand when my feet are sore.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“To love with forgiveness, to love without deserving, to love when the truth has been exposed, to love with a heart that gathers the other into itself.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“Sometimes the world isn’t so kind to people who are different, especially women,” Bronwyn said.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“Fate and Destiny, they are ours to make. We choose from many fates.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“others: ‘We traveled too far too fast, and I waited for my soul to catch up.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“The feeling of missing something you never had.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“Maybe we aren’t the victims here, Clara. Maybe we are the ones who have the freedom to become what and who we are, as they struggled a generation before us to do the same.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“Yes. It makes my life seem so small.” “There is nothing wrong with small and chosen, Clara.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“There was a word in Mother’s language she describes as ‘the loneliness at the heart of things; believing you will find what will quench the longing but there is nothing, not of this world.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“In hopelessness, there was a great and wild letting-go.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“soul”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind

“There is no moving forward or change without loss.”
― Patti Callahan Henry, The Story She Left Behind