A Tangled Mercy Quotes

“A life worth living is one of compassion. And a life of compassion will include many tears.”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy

“You make sure you do something good with your life, you hear? Something that puts more beauty and more kindness into the world. And be a person of courage, my Kate. With a tender heart but a lot tougher hide.”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy

“This is a work of fiction, which, contrary to what any reader paying attention to recent events might assume, I began writing more than twenty years before its publication. It has been a most unusual journey. Before I tell—briefly—the story behind this novel and the remarkable people who inspired it, let me add that while this novel does feature some real people, places, and pivotal events, they are handled in a fictional manner. My intent is not only to tell a story worth reading but equally—or, to be honest, more importantly—to honor the memory of those in nineteenth- and twenty-first-century Charleston who have set an example of courage, conviction, and a spirit of love far stronger than”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy

“Funny how much I’ve read about this place for months—pages and pages of history. And no idea how little I knew until I came for myself.”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy

“There's a beauty, and there's a strength, you know, that grows only in a long walk together in the same direction.”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy

“A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.” —Jackie Robinson”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy

“Stubbornness is one of my few virtues.”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy

“From the narrow two-story shop, smoke curled out a crooked brick chimney, its mortar mostly crumbled away—as if it had stood leaning forward to watch the invasions and victory marches and funeral processions of two, maybe three hundred years.”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy

“life worth living is one of compassion. And a life of compassion will include many tears.”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy

“And I’d tell you that changes nothing about how we should treat him if he came to us for help. We welcome the stranger. That’s what we do.”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy

“I think I upset your father”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy

“Sometimes I do slip and say what I mean, instead of what ought to be said.”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy

“That’s how adoption works, Kate—a child gets born in your heart, and every ounce of your bone and your flesh and your soul become part of that child from then on.”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy

“up of feeling as the next man, including a brute of”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy

“Only for some of us, maybe forgiveness is more a journey than a moment in time. Me, I won’t be getting there fast.”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy

“No coffee worth drinking requires cream.”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy

“But Rose lifted her champagne flute in a toast. “It is precisely our unfortunate characteristics that make any of us interesting—wouldn’t you say, ladies? Those of us, I might add, who are interesting.” Maneuvering Kate away from the gaggle, Rose led her through the gardens and down to the river.”
― Joy Jordan-Lake, A Tangled Mercy