The Wishing Tide Quotes

“Time, you see, is the enemy, a trap of our own making. The past is lost forever, a wasteland of all that could have been and never was, while the future stretches endlessly before us, always an hourglass’s worth of sand beyond our reach. Today, then, is what we have left—the here and the now—to make our wishes, and to fight for the life we want.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“Life gives us exactly what we need, even what we want, but we’re afraid to grab it and hold on with both hands. We let go when the holding gets hard. We blame when we should forgive.” She paused for the tiniest beat, locking eyes with her son. “And we run when we should stand our ground. Because we don’t understand that we don’t just get the life we wish for. We get the life we fight for.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“That’s what I thought.” Her smile turned wistful before fading entirely. “Life is lived in chapters, my girl. Fairy tales and horror stories all strung together like beads on a string. When one chapter ends—when fate conspires to tear us from our own book—we’ve no choice but to begin again, to invent a new version of ourselves. And we pretend that version is all that has ever been, all that will ever be. We pretend we’re safe. Until the tide comes rushing in again, and we must swim for our lives once more.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“No, my girl. No one begins this way. It’s a place you arrive at, a bottom you sink to when life pushes you under one too many times. You paddle toward the light for a while, because you want to believe you can save yourself. But then one day you see it all true, and you simply let go. You stop fighting.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“wonder”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“we don’t just get the life we wish for. We get the life we fight for.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“Blame can take up a lot of space in a heart. I finally figured that out. Life is too short for grudges, the big ones or the small ones.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“But this woman is different. There was no disgust in her gaze, only curiosity and something like compassion as our eyes held for that long, rainy moment. And now, as I pedal away like the madwoman I am, I feel I have received a great kindness, perhaps the greatest of my life.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“It has been a long time since anyone had the boldness to look me in the eye, to risk a true seeing. Oh, they glance in my direction, but they’re afraid of what they might see, a mirror, perhaps, of the future, should life go suddenly and terribly wrong.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“Now, as she stared out past the dunes, she saw that even the footprints she’d left in the sand a few hours ago were already gone, blown over—as if she’d never been there at all.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“It came less often now, but today it had come with a vengeance. Not sadness exactly, but the numbing awareness that this was all there would ever be.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“Life is lived in chapters, my girl. Fairy tales and horror stories all strung together like beads on a string. When one chapter ends—when fate conspires to tear us from our own book—we’ve no choice but to begin again, to invent a new version of ourselves. And we pretend that version is all that has ever been, all that will ever be. We pretend we’re safe. Until the tide comes rushing in again, and we must swim for our lives once more.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“as long as she had rice, beans, and pasta in the pantry they weren’t going to starve.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“Life plays no favorites when she sets out to break a heart.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“Her fault, of course—somehow everything was always her fault”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“It had ended, not with a bang but with a whimper,”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“Do you have a room of your own? Do you have one space where you like to create, or can you do it in different places? A. These days, life comes at you full blast twenty-four/seven. There are so many distractions: TV, with its twenty-four-hour news cycle, the infectious lure of social media, cell phones, e-mail, and always, always an endless list of things that need doing. Having a place that’s yours alone, a kind of sanctuary where you have at least some command over what comes into that space, offers a small sense of control and helps set the tone for creativity.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“there’s something very healing about the sea. I’m always calmest when I’m near the water,”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“don’t just get the life we wish for. We get the life we fight for.” The life we fight for.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide