Ask Him Why Quotes

“you can’t change anybody’s mind. The sooner I learned that, the happier my life would be, and now I felt like a happy life was a goal again for the first time in a long time.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“The point is that it’s you being destroyed by your hate. Not him. This is what the Buddha called picking up a hot coal to hurl at your enemy.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“My older relatives grabbed me and latched onto me, and I felt like they wanted something from me. Their love felt like a demand. Then I let go and they pinched my cheeks and kissed them, and it only made me feel drained, like I had all the love and they only wanted to refill their tanks by taking some of mine.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“Everything grows best in oxygen and sunlight except secrets and guilt and regrets. They”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“I mean you can’t change his mind. You can’t change anybody’s mind. No matter what you say to them. The sooner you figure that out, the happier your life will be.” “But”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“Not a bad life's work.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“And that, I now realize, is how you start the pattern of silences. So innocently and on such a small scale, and then once you open the door for them, they barge in and take on a life of their own.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“Everything grows best in oxygen and sunlight except secrets and guilt and regrets. They like the dank spaces. Drag them out into the light and they fail to thrive.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“It made me think of Luanne. Saying, You can do anything you want, so long as you’re willing to pay the bill when it comes in.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“Hammy says you can’t unroll a snowball. Just like you can’t un-ring a bell. He wasn’t blaming me or trying to make me feel guilty or anything. It’s just the way it is. We’re responsible for what we do.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“desertion, and I was right. At the very bottom of human experience comes a set of certain privileges, a special zone where the rules apply to everyone else except you. It was good of the world to build itself that way, and include that tiny consolation prize for those who have nothing else to recommend their lives in that moment. The trick, I’ve found as the years go by, is not to get addicted to that feeling. It would be easy enough to do. It can be used like a Get Out of Jail Free card, because the universe has just skewered us right through our core and put us over the coals to roast, so it’s unthinkable for anyone to expect anything from us in that moment. Anything that lifts responsibility for our actions is addictive, I’ve found.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“We were just thrown out into the harshest corners of the world to figure things out for ourselves.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“I knew better than to believe a family was anything like the ones you saw on TV, and my own experience was disaster oriented at almost all times, but I knew—if only from the family I’d begun to form with Sean and Maya—that there was such a thing as people functioning together. Maybe not every minute of every day, but long enough to form a decent holiday. Maybe even a decent life.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“Dear, dear Ruthie,” he said, and grasped one of my hands in both of his. And although it was an oversimplification of the man, it struck me that this was his single greatest quality: he made everybody feel dear. And the sad truth of this world is that not many people feel that way, and not much of the time.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“I decided I would be strong, not because I had to be, not because they had used up all the weakness, but because strong was what I wanted for myself.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“Those who haven’t been in school for years may have forgotten the piercing and utter humiliation of almost anything your mother does there. Even if it’s marginally acceptable by adult standards. I haven’t been in school for years. University and graduate school not counting. And yet I remember.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“To this very day, I wonder why, when a man wants to insult another man, he calls him a woman or a girl. Now that I’m grown, I notice that these are guys with wives and girlfriends and daughters. Don’t they see what they’re saying?”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“Then, like anything else that can’t be understood, that can’t be influenced, we let it go by.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“Ruth said, “Ham told me once that the problem with people is that we forget that something unexpected can happen at any time.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“Good to get the truth out into the air,” Ham said. “Everything grows best in oxygen and sunlight except secrets and guilt and regrets. They like the dank spaces. Drag them out into the light and they fail to thrive.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“regarding”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“You have a decent brain, you just keep it in mothballs all the time.” “You”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“Drag them out into the light and they fail to thrive.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“Good to get the truth out into the air,” Ham said. “Everything grows best in oxygen and sunlight except secrets and guilt and regrets. They like the dank spaces. Drag them out into the light and they fail to thrive.” We”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“At the very bottom of human experience comes a set of certain privileges, a special zone where the rules apply to everyone else except you. It was good of the world to build itself that way, and include that tiny consolation prize for those who have nothing else to recommend their lives in that moment. The”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“Because it’s based on what people need. When people come here, everything in their life is bad, but that’s not the problem. The problem is, they think it always will be. They can’t see anything new and different down the road. People can bear almost any amount of pain if they think there’s an end to it. So suddenly something happens that they never could have imagined: a daft old man invites them in for a nice hearty meal. It’s not the man or the meal that convinces them. It’s that they forgot how at any moment something can always happen that you never expected. Something better. Once they remember that, it’s a whole new ball game.” I”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“But then there’s the other kind. They’re not used to being seen. They want it but they don’t want it. It’s like bright sunlight. You live in the dark all your life, you want nothing more than to step out into that warm sun. But then it hurts your eyes because it’s too bright. It burns you.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“At the very bottom of human experience comes a set of certain privileges, a special zone where the rules apply to everyone else except you. It was good of the world to build itself that way, and include that tiny consolation prize for those who have nothing else to recommend their lives in that moment. The trick, I’ve found as the years go by, is not to get addicted to that feeling. It would be easy enough to do. It can be used like a Get Out of Jail Free card, because the universe has just skewered us right through our core and put us over the coals to roast, so it’s unthinkable for anyone to expect anything from us in that moment. Anything that lifts responsibility for our actions is addictive, I’ve found. So”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“Anything that lifts responsibility for our actions is addictive, I’ve found. So”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why

“figured he had all those years in”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Ask Him Why