Where the Light Enters Quotes

“Good marriages push us—not to become someone else but to become the best version of ourselves.”
― Jill Biden, Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself

“This is the truest thing I know: that love makes a family whole. It doesn't matter if you're blending a family with biological and nonbiological children, or healing the wounds of losing a loved one, or inviting an aging parent to live with you. The details may differ, but love is the common denominator.”
― Jill Biden, Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself

“The Biden's have another belief as well:" If you have to ask, it's too late." When someone is in need, when they're hurting, when they're overwhelmed, you don't wait until they tell you they need your help. You give it before they have to ask. So when Neilia died and Joe was left with two young boys, trying to father them and get through his own grief, all while juggling the new hectic life of a senator, Val didn't ask if there was something she could do. She moved in. And for three years, through her own career ambitions, through her courtship and eventual marriage to her husband, Jack, she lived with Joe and the boys and made sure they had the love and support they needed to keep going.”
― Jill Biden, Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself

“There’s a story that’s sometimes called the parable of the long spoons. No one is sure which religion or philosophy it originates from, though it seems to appear as a myth in many traditions. The details change across cultures—spoons, chopsticks, soup, or rice. But the basic points are the same: A man asks God to show him heaven and hell, and God presents to him two rooms. In the first, sickly people sit around a table, and in the center is a gigantic pot of delicious-smelling soup. Each person can reach the pot, but their spoons are so long that there is no way to get them back into their mouths. Each tortured soul struggles in vain to get a bite to eat. They writhe in pain as they fruitlessly ladle and starve. This, of course, is hell. And in the second room is the same table, the same soup, the same terribly long spoons—but this time, the diners, sated and happy, pour spoonfuls of soup into their neighbors’ mouths. In hell, we starve alone. In heaven, we feed each other.”
― Jill Biden, Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself

“like the branches of a tree / I am an extension of you / my heart and soul / firmly and effortlessly / embedded in your roots.”
― Jill Biden, Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself

“Kierkegaard quote, “Faith sees best in the dark,”
― Jill Biden, Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself

“Nana-tucket!”
― Jill Biden, Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself

“Albert Camus: “In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.”
― Jill Biden, Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself

“A little over a month later, on December 18,1972, I was listening to the radio while driving to campus to take one of my final exams. The announcer broke into programming to say that Joe Biden's wife Neilia, and their thirteen month old daughter, Naomi, had been killed in a car accident earlier that day, on their way home from buying the family's Christmas tree. Their young sons, Beau and Hunter, had been in the car but survived.”
― Jill Biden, Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself