The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes Quotes

“When the music ends for someone you love you don't stop dancing. You dance for them as well.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“We are happy to let children spend hours merrily slaughtering, maiming and motherfucking in front of their computer screens, and yet baulk at them attending the funeral of a dearly loved grandparent in case it upsets them. I think we are teaching them to be afraid of the wrong things.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“Life is full of small joys if you know where to look for them,”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“Life is full of small joys if you know where to look for them, and the woman’s bright eyes are forever seeking them out and finding them, even in the darkest of times and places.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“said, ‘If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain’,”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“We are so much more comfortable saying ‘fuck’ than ‘dead’. We are happy to let children spend hours merrily slaughtering, maiming and motherfucking in front of their computer screens, and yet baulk at them attending the funeral of a dearly loved grandparent in case it upsets them. I think we are teaching them to be afraid of the wrong things.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“I like angels, so I’m inclined to look more favourably upon a religion if it includes the angelic element. If it discourages gratuitous hugging, even better”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“Life has a habit of throwing you a curve ball every once in a while, and there’s nothing you can do about that, but you can always choose how you deal with it. You can lie down and roll over, or you can stand up and fight. But you don’t need do it on your own: there are people who can help. All you need is the wisdom and courage to let them.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“I was so struck by her uncomplicated capacity for happiness.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“Sally doesn't sing quietly, to herself or even just to me and her crows. She sings loud to the world...People stare as they pass us by and some even point and snigger, but Sally doesn't care. And neither do I. I'm not even angry with them. I feel sorry for them that they see a weirdo where I can see a wonder woman. And I'm proud and grateful that I'm with her.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“There is a distant figure standing in a higher part of the cemetery with her arms flung open and her head held high. Singing. She is singing. ..It is Sally. She is directing her performance towards a group of Italian graves...and is engaging with the headstones exactly as if they were her audience.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“Life is full of small joys if you know where to look for them, and the woman's bright eyes are forever seeking them out and finding them, even in the darkest of times and places.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“When the music ends for someone you love you don’t stop dancing. You dance for them as well.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“I am now transfixed by this vintage sex-siren, who must be seventy if she’s a day. She is a woman who looks as though she is starring in a movie of her own life, and loving every minute of it. She is dazzling. Her long, platinum-blonde hair is twisted into a sexily dishevelled chignon, she wears several strings of pearls and even more make-up than Roni. Her eyes are heavily lined in black, her foundation could support a small bungalow, and her lips are painted into a perfect red pout. But somehow, on this woman, the effect is less lady of the night and more old-school Hollywood glamour.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“I hope that heaven exists. Because when the person that you love the most is already dead, it is the one place where you might be reunited, and if heaven is just wishful thinking or an urban myth, the hope of finding them again is gone forever.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“To live through a child's death takes great courage and we had no choice, but it takes greater courage to live on without them when we do.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“I learned to understand my emotions and with that knowledge came a certain degree of control. I have”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“there was one time when I went too far and almost died. The water was very cold and I stayed under too long. Someone dragged me out just in time and I made out that it was simply a foolish accident. But I knew that it was more than that, and I learned a valuable lesson from it. I’m a survivor – I don’t want to die. The problem was that I was at the mercy of my emotions – I lacked control, and sometimes my grief could override my will.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“Today would have been my son’s fourteenth birthday, and for all these years, this is what I have put my friends through. I have condemned them to a crippling carefulness in order to spare my feelings, and it has taken Hugo’s big mouth to make me realise it. My grief has become an addiction; a bad habit like a tattered comfort blanket that I have hung on to for far too long. It has to stop. I look in the mirror again, and try to see my face as a stranger would see it. It has all the requisite physical components to make it reasonably attractive; green eyes, full but well-shaped lips and a strong, straight nose. But there is no spark or spirit behind those eyes, and there is an expression of ingrained defeat haunting every gaunt contour of that woman’s face. That woman in the mirror is not me. She is the spectre that I have allowed myself to become and I don’t want to be her any more. I want to be the old Masha; the one I pray to God is still hiding inside me somewhere, hanging on by the tips of her fingernails.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“Refinement lies in the heart and the spirit rather than in outward appearance, but it is by what we do and say that we prove that it exists within us.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

“When the music ends for someone you love, you don't stop dancing. You dance for them as well.”
― Ruth Hogan, The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes