The Shape of Mercy Quotes

“When you only do what is expected of you, you never learn what you would've done had you chosen for yourself.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“I used to think mercy meant showing kindness to someone who didn't deserve it, as if only the recipient defined the act. The girl in between has learned that mercy is defined by its giver. Our flaws are obvious, yet we are loved and able to love, if we choose, because there is that bit of the divine still smoldering in us.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“I don't know very many people who can piece together eloquent prayers when their souls are wounded. Words don't come at those times, but tears do. I have always thought of my tears as prayers.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“I smiled. "I just wish... I wish I didn't judge people by what they have or don't have. I wish I could see people for you they are on the inside before I come to any conclusions."
My dad blinked slowly and then said... "Yes, that would be better than the other, but it still makes you their judge.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“Dissecting a book was the same as making sense of life. You have to find a way to interpret life, or you'll go nuts.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“We understand what we want to understand.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“We are born knowing how to be just. And we die knowing we spent a lifetime pretending we didn't.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“I think literature reveals more about us than history does.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“Our flaws are obvious, yet we are loved and able to love, if we choose, because there is that bit of the divine still smoldering in us.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“Papa said marriage is not kept by affection but by a pledge. Affection does not beget the pledge; the pledge begets the affection. When you share a life and a home and a bed with someone, you become soul mates as surely as cream and effort produce butter....And so I began to imagine my life with James Luddy. I imagined being butter.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“I used to think mercy meant showing kindness to someone who didn’t deserve it, as if only the recipient defined the act. The girl in between has learned that mercy is defined by its giver. Our flaws are obvious, yet we are loved and able to love, if we choose, because there is that bit of the divine still smoldering in us.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“He speaks of Satan as though the Devil is God’s equal instead of a mere created being. God could whisper Satan out of existence with a word. Surely Rev. Parris knows this.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“We are born knowing how to be just. And we die knowing we spent a lifetime pretending we didn’t.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“How does anybody convince anybody else of anything? You catch them at a weak moment, when they’re feeling alone or afraid, and you offer them the security of solidarity. Advertising execs use this tactic all the time: Buy this and be like everyone else. Don’t buy it and be the loser no one respects.” “So I guess the key is to never let yourself feel alone or afraid.” “No,” he responded. “The key”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“the remembered fear that someone can say something untrue about you and as long as there is someone else to believe it, you are whatever they say you are.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“And I have found that the rich and the poor have a hugely significant characteristic in common. As do the accuser and the condemned, the loved and the unloved, the free and the bound. We each think we understand the other. We don’t.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“...The primroses always come back. Even after a hard winter, they find a way to survive. They come back every spring.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“We are both of us torn by the weight of knowing all these people cannot possibly be witches. If we speak in their defense, we become accused. If we say nothing, we condemn them falsely with our silence. What would God have us do?”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“The key is to never let someone else tell you what to think.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“...I don't want my destiny handed to me. I want to choose it.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“The frail letters on the first page were barely legible; they looked like whispers, if whispers had form.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“Confidence tends to minimize the magnitude of the choice.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“People who are free to choose will choose the best use for whatever it is they possess. Wealth and prosperity begin with the freedom to choose.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“They aren't afraid to take risks, but they don't gamble. They are generous but not extravagant. They thrive on beauty of economics, the fact that it is both art and science.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“We moved wordlessly from one room to another, from the room of the dead to the room where time lay in pages everywhere I looked.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy