The River Is Waiting Quotes

“Worrying is carrying tomorrow’s load with today’s strength—carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.’—Corrie ten Boom.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“Having hope is kind of like praying. Like asking God for something and hoping He’ll hear you. But if you have an expectation, it’s more like a demand than a prayer. Like you’re saying, here’s what I expect, God, so make it happen for me. See? Like you’re the one who gets to give the orders.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“you can look back at the past, just don’t keep staring at it.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“I used to use alcohol to drown out my problems,” the woman says, “then it finally dawned on me that my problems were better swimmers than I was.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“If you focus on what’s harmonious and beautiful in your present surroundings, harmony and beauty will follow you.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“way. Having hope is kind of like praying. Like asking God for something and hoping He’ll hear you. But if you have an expectation, it’s more like a demand than a prayer. Like you’re saying, here’s what I expect, God, so make it happen for me. See? Like you’re the one who gets to give the orders.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“She says she believes that painters and writers are magicians of a sort—that they invite us to lose ourselves in their work and, in doing so, find ourselves.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“I open the front and read the dedication: “To those who live in prisons of their own or others’ making.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“ ‘Worrying is carrying tomorrow’s load with today’s strength—carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.’—Corrie ten Boom.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“her mom”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“I’m so sorry I withheld that forgiveness from you while you were alive.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“It annoys me that someone I’ve already decided I don’t like has just given me something useful to think about.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“Maybe that spirit is speaking to me through the sound of moving water. And maybe that sound is telling me to trust that not everything is stuck and stagnant—that forward movement is possible. That by the time I’ve done my three years here”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“When you’re an active alcoholic, you give up everything for one thing. But when you commit to sobriety, you give up one thing for everything.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“There’s a saying in AA: too much analysis can lead to paralysis.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“area,”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“And when the vaccines became available, some of the guards refused to get shots”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“Brown.… Mostly confined to drug addicts and homosexual men. So neither of those groups count? That pisses me off on behalf of Manny and the majority of the guys doing time here.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“the man” likes to rewrite history because the truth makes him look bad. And he’s right. To us white victors had gone the spoils and the right to flip the narrative.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“In school they taught us that we were the good guys—the descendants of brave freedom seekers who had crossed the Atlantic and established their claim to the “New World.” Land where our fathers died, land of the pilgrims’ pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring. But we weren’t the good guys. That was just propaganda.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“The book was published in 2012, when Obama was president. I remember reading about him visiting some prison and telling the inmates that some of them were there because they’d made the same kind of mistakes that he made when he was young. His message was all about hope and change and getting past those mistakes. Now that Trump’s in the White House, the political winds have shifted so abruptly, you could get whiplash.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“too much analysis can lead to paralysis.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“There’s a saying in AA: too much analysis can lead”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“When you’re negotiating with the opposition”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“weeks ago.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“They’re both wearing T-shirts. His says”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“The mind will likely forget the traumatic event, but the body will remember.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“Then it clobbers you like a wave you didn’t see coming. Crashes into you and pulls you under so that”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“Worrying is carrying tomorrow's load with today's strength, carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn't empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting

“Having hope is kind of like praying. Like asking God for something and hoping He’ll hear you. But if you have an expectation”
― Wally Lamb, The River Is Waiting