Brave Girl, Quiet Girl Quotes

“You have no choice but to live through whatever’s happening. I mean . . . as opposed to what? If you’re going to continue to live, then you’re going to deal with it. You have no choice. You can say, ‘I’m going to fall apart now.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“life is just a series of our own choices catching up with us.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“I guess life is just a series of our own choices catching up with us.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“I think we all more or less know where we stand with people, whether we like to admit it to ourselves or not.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“Every now and then my love for that child hit me so hard I felt bowled over. Like a turtle knocked upside down onto its shell, unable to right itself. This was one of those moments.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“Well, you know how it is. We either grow up to be our mother or we make a solemn vow to the universe to be her polar opposite. Doesn’t work every minute of every day, though.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“It’s funny how many times when something seems impossible to explain, it turns out money is the part you weren’t getting. You know, once you finally figure it out.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“Used to be not so many people lived on the street, and when they did, you could more or less tell why. Addiction or mental illness. But these days you got the majority of your people with, like, one paycheck standing between them and the street. So nowadays, could be anything. Medical bills. Job loss.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“You can say whatever you want about being done, but after you say it, you’re still a live person. And you still have to do whatever you figure you can.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“Besides, I could barely keep my own head above water. How could I help my mother when I couldn’t even help myself?”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“Okay,” I said. But only because I wanted the conversation to be over. Only because I wanted anything that required anything from me to stop. I had nothing to give to the world in that moment. Literally nothing. Couldn’t everybody see that?”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“Be careful what you promise your kids. We ask them to believe that the world is a deeply predictable place, and you can always know where you’ll be tomorrow. But how sure are we?”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“Well, you know how it is. We either grow up to be our mother or we make a solemn vow to the universe to be her polar opposite. Doesn’t work every minute of every day, though.” Etta noticed”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“How can you do that to a person? Hate them when they haven't even done anything to you?”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“That was the problem with my mother. I could never fully get her voice out of my head.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“So I sort of broke into a million pieces but didn't let the pieces all tumble apart. Like I tried to just be cracked all over but not shattered.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“She was the bravest, quietest girl she knew how to be at a time like that.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“It's like life has given you this huge challenge to make sure that what was running in your family stops with you and doesn't go on any more than it has.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“It was one of those nights that's a really good time to have four walls and a door to close.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“Thing is," he said, "there's only just so many times people can break their promises to you before you start figuring everybody does it.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“Even armed with my new information, this strip of city was still one large haystack. And Molly was still one small needle.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“Funny how you can take a thing like carpet for granted if you always had it and you figure you always will.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“The other part of it was that sometimes you just have to take a chance on something, because otherwise you definitely end up with nothing. You just have to be a brave girl sometimes, like I told the baby a thousand times that night.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“It was actually harder to think about moving forward into whatever unknown situation they had planned for me than to ditch out and go back to what I knew. What I knew was terrible, but at least I knew it, and there’s something that’s almost a comfort in that.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“You have no choice but to live through whatever’s happening. I mean . . . as opposed to what? If you’re going to continue to live, then you’re going to deal with it. You have no choice. You can say, ‘I’m going to fall apart now.’ And you can do that. Whatever falling apart looks like to you. But when you’re done, it’s still”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“was grateful, because the world looked beautiful in that big storm, and because I knew that somewhere in the world there was somebody who didn’t have a can of hot soup, and I did.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“We deal with everything, because, short of actually deciding not to live anymore, we don’t have any other option. Not one damned option.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“offered”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“Then he asked, “How long did it take you to love her?”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl

“We either grow up to be our mother or we make a solemn vow to the universe to be her polar opposite. Doesn’t work every minute of every day, though.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Brave Girl, Quiet Girl