A Fall of Marigolds Quotes

“The person who completes your life is not so much the person who shares all the years of your existence, but rather the person who made your life worth living, no matter how long or short a time you were given to spend with them.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“Do not choose to abandon love because you are afraid that it will crush you. Love is the only true constant in a fragile world.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“Everything beautiful has a story it wants to tell.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“It should always make us happy to say that loving someone and being loved by someone is worth whatever price paid.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“Love was both the softest edge and the sharpest edge of what made life real.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“I want you to know that love is not a person. It is not of this earth at all. It wasn't until now that I realized I had mistakenly come to believe that love came from a place inside me and therefore had to protect that place. It comes from heaven, Eleanor. It is given to us not to hold on to or hide from, but to give away.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“My choices that terrible morning had been prompted by love. What others had chosen had been prompted by hate. The effects of our choices had spilled onto each other. They always did.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“I understood nothing really about love, only that it was the most devastating, most spectacular, most desirable force on earth. Love was both the softest edge and the sharpest edge of what made life real.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“Kindness is always motivated by something nobler than just a desire to be kind.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“He could not know that thoughts are not things you can give or not give. Thoughts are thrust upon you. You can only hope that thoughts that you don't want will tire of you at some point and flutter away.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“Life is real, in all its complexity. And though it can be painfully difficult, it can also be unspeakably wonderful.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“Poetry speaks slowly. My mother told me that. We are usually too much in a hurry.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“Sometimes the expectation is better than the fulfillment.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“Everything beautiful has a story it wants to tell. But not every story is beautiful.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“Love (they say) sometimes flies, sometimes walks, runs with one, creeps with another, warms a third, burns a fourth, wounding some, and slaying others. In one moment it begins, performs and concludes its career; lays siege in the morning to a fortress which is surrendered before night, there being no fortress that can withstand its power.” —Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“People who say everything happens for a reason usually say that only when they agree with the reason.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“But heaven seems a place where truth cannot hurt. Here, the truth can be devastating.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“then surely there is an adversary. There is something opposed to you. Something that desires to defeat you. You want to believe your enemy is the disease. You don’t want to believe even for a minute that the enemy is your own body, this weak tent of flesh that cannot stand up against a speck of contagion, this fragile weave of muscle, bone, and soul that also cannot resist the power of flame nor the pull of the ground”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“Love is the only true constant in a fragile world.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“Everything beautiful has a story it wants to tell'" she said reading aloud the store's tagline at the top of the form.. "I love that.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“Hurried people miss many things. They see only what is right on top. . . .”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“Disease has no intent. It doesn't want anything. It has no malevolent desire to kill. If it could talk it would not say "I want to make you ill. I want to bring you to the brink of death. I want to kill." It would say only "I make people ill. I bring them to the brink of death. I can kill."

The disease is like machine that does what it does, but has no cognizance of self. When a machine stops working, it does not care, and it doesn't celebrate when it starts working again.

To those that have it, and to their loved ones, the disease seems heinous, deliberate,and personal. And of course I know why they feel this way... when you are in a fight for your life, then surely there is an adversary. There is something opposed to you. Something that desires to defeat you. You want to believe the enemy is the disease. You don't want to believe, even for a minute, that the enemy is your own body. This weak tent of flesh, that cannot stand up against a speck of contagion. This fragile weave of muscle, bone, and soul, that also cannot resist the power of flame, nor the pull of the ground below it.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“Which was worse? Mourning the loss of something without knowing you never actually had it, or mourning the loss of what you thought you had and never had at all?”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“There were a thousand words for dreams realized and only one common whimper for hopes interrupted.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“But it also seemed that every time I shared Edward’s story with someone, his hold on me diminished a little. And I didn’t want him to disappear from me; I had so little of him to hold on to.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“I believe I have you to thank for reminding me that pictures on an urn, though lovely, are not real. Life is real, in all its complexity. And though it can be painfully difficult, it can also be unspeakably wonderful.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“You can only hope that thoughts that you don’t want will tire of you at some point and flutter away. I”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“People who say everything happens for a reason usually say that only when they agree with the reason. Those people are not the ones who wish they could fold back time and make different choices. They don’t lie awake at night and whisper, If only . . .”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“Fire is always hungry for things that don’t belong to it.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“To her, there was only one shade to every color. This was the difference between us. She was happy with the one shade.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds