As Bright as Heaven Quotes

“Home isn't a safe place where everything stays the same; it's a place where you are safe and loved despite nothing staying the same.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“Change always happens... We adjust to it. Somehow we figure out a way. We straighten what we can or learn how to like something a little crooked. That's how it is. Something breaks, you fix it as best you can. There's always a way to make something better, even if it means sweeping up the broken pieces and starting all over. That's how we keep moving, keep breathing, keep opening our eyes every morning, even when the only thing we know for sure is that we're still alive.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“I hope [Willa] still thinks butterflies are beautiful. I think they are. We shouldn't think for a moment that just because their lives are short they shouldn't be here.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“You think you have a view of what's waiting for you just up the road, but then something happens, and you find out pretty quick you were looking at the wrong road.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“If people don't do their part to stop the spread of evil when they're asked to, it just gets stronger and then no one can stop it.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“You want to fix what hurts the moment it starts hurting, but this time you're going to have to embrace the slowness of healing. You'll never be able to live with this part of your story until you realize you must make peace with what happened to you and your part in it. And that takes time.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“Sooner or later she will learn time changes everything, takes everything: sometimes in a blink, and sometimes so slowly you can’t even see it happening.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“I guess our eyes don't change much from when we were young. Perhaps it's just how we see things that changes.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“Life is wonderful and beautiful but oh, how hard it can be.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“Home isn’t a place where everything stays the same; it’s a place where you are safe and loved despite nothing staying the same. Change always happens. Always. Surely Jamie knows that. We adjust to it. Somehow we figure out a way. We straighten what we can or learn how to like something a little crooked. That’s how it is. Something breaks, you fix it as best you can. There’s always a way to make something better, even if it means sweeping up the broken pieces and starting all over. That’s how we keep moving, keep breathing, keep opening our eyes every morning, even when the only thing we know for sure is that we’re still alive.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“I came through the crucible, and it did not reduce me to ashes. I survived.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“I no longer fear Death, though I know that I should. I'm strangely at peace with what I used to think of as my enemy. Living seems more the taskmaster of the two, doesn't it? Life is wonderful and beautiful but oh, how hard it can be. Dying, by contrast, is easy and simple, almost gentle. But who can I tell such a thing to? No one. I am troubled by how remarkable this feeling is.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“Everyone has a past, and everyone's past matters.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“And what does war even accomplish? How does one country win over another by simply killing its people? None of it makes any sense.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“I hope she still thinks butterflies are beautiful. I think they are. We shouldn't think for a moment that just because their lives are short they shouldn't be there.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“We are, all of us, living out the stories of our lives. Each of our stories will end, in time, but meanwhile, we fill the pages of our existence with all the love we can, for as long as we can. This is how we make a life.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“sometimes in a blink, and sometimes so slowly you can’t even see it happening.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“even that we only have for a little while. Even the candle is not ours to keep. And yet how we care for that candle for that stretch of time that it is still ours! How we want to remember the shape and fragrance of the little”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“It’s as if the body is a candle and the soul is its flame. When the flame is snuffed out, all that is left to prove that there had been a flame is the candle,”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“We only see a little bit of our stories at a time, and the hard parts remind us too harshly that we’re fragile and flawed. But it isn’t all hard. Your story isn’t all hard parts. Some of it is incredibly beautiful.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“It’s as if the body is a candle and the soul is its flame. When the flame is snuffed out, all that is left to prove that there had been a flame is the candle, and even that we only have for a little while. Even the candle is not ours to keep. And yet how we care for that candle for that stretch of time that it is still ours! How we want to remember the shape and fragrance of the little flame it held.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“He's more than just the baby she found all those years ago. He's the proof that out of a great pile of ashes you can still find something that the fire didn't take.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“The main reason I have come here is to shuffle Death back to the place where it belong. That won't happen if I don't get to tangle with it.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“With all great loves there is first a great struggle,”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“[Evie] says the flu wanted to make barbarians of us, to have us think life is not precious and the dead are not worthy of our kindest care. Our humanity is what made what happened to us so terrible.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“Death doesn't ever look at shoulda, though, does it? Death looks at nothing. It just does what it's meant to do.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“I sat there thinking that if God could split an entire sea in half so a million Hebrews could walk across dry land, couldn’t he stop a little germ?”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“Event succeeds event; accidents, people, happenings, one after another come toward us. Each must be met and dealt with. . . . For this process of adjustment is life, and the mastery of it is the art of living. . . . —KARL DE SCHWEINITZ,
The Art of Helping People out of Trouble, 1924”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“The heart always does what it needs to do.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“found out how fast things can change. You think you have a view of what’s waiting for you just up the road, but then something happens, and you find out pretty quick you were looking at the wrong road.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven