The Dress Shop on King Street Quotes

“Buttons may be tiny. Delicate, even. But they fasten together the fabric of an entire garment. The fabric wear day in and day out, the mundane cotton blouse and the lacy wedding dress. The fabric, the seams, that cover us, warm us, protect us. Binding dream to dream, story to story, but mostly, death to life.
With a particular kind of beauty that rises from the dust. The resurrection life of a second story, of the breath that mends us.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“Inside the shop, a blond woman reached for a peach silk number on display. What Millie would give to go inside the store and let her own fingers graze the fabric of that gown.
Layers of peach silk draped down the back of the dress, then fell into a line of buttons along the fitted waistline and hips. The whole gown was like a summer dream.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“The blush peach, silk dress was layered with cream lace over the bodice and hemline. Most arresting was the stunning cape that Harper imagined to be from the 1940's.
They just didn't make dresses like that anymore.
Actually, they didn't make dresses like it back then, either.
It was exquisite. One of a kind.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“From the beginning, I have been working between the seams. Where you have ripped, I have mended. When you have torn, I have sewn you. Stitching death to resurrection, failure to dreams, hurt to healing. I never throw out a fabric because it needs repairing.
You've spent your life on the other side of the seams, thinking all the if-only's. But there will always be another section to piece. Another hole that needs mending. So long as you live, you will have loose stitches---don't avoid them. Come and exchange them for strong seams.
Keep the fabric of your dreams.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“She loved Franklin as the color of wildflowers on a summer's day. She may be Red, but he was all the others and she would see him every time she saw the blending blur of brightly colored petals waving in the breeze.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“The slightest sea breeze clung to the air as Peter and Harper walked the pathway along Charleston Harbor. A few dolphins played in the not-so-distant waves, and sunlight fell like glitter in shades of orange and pink against the water. And this---this---was Charleston.
All they needed was a front porch painted haint blue and a proverbial glass of sweet tea.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“But you also can’t ignore the thing that keeps your soul alive, because I believe God puts that sort of stuff in us for a reason. That He speaks to us through it. God is faithful, and when He calls you to something, He will also give you the means, even if it doesn’t look as expected.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“Sometimes life gives us those moments. Like the very first flutter of a butterfly’s wings. Moments that are so profound and so purely beautiful, you try to capture them so you can come back to them later.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“By taking the safe route, she was actually taking the harder one, allowing fear to trump faith in her heart. Pushing healing away from herself and others, telling God His plans for her weren’t worth her time because she’d been too afraid to make the steps.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“Just that sometimes, we all hold tighter and tighter to the very things that are drowning us. We think we’re keeping ourselves safe, but we’re not. We’re just trying to control the stuff that scares us rather than to feel the fear and move on.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“But if God gave you a dream, you’d better listen. You just remember that God knows the how and the why, though the when may be frustrating. ’Cause, Harper, if I know one thing about life, it ain’t always Jubilee.” Daddy switched the lamp off, and moonlight flooded the room. “No matter how long it takes, sweet girl, when your great tide comes in, make sure your nets are good and ready.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“Harper laughed for the first time all day. “God’s timing don’t always match ours, and that’s okay.” She slowly blew out a deep breath. “Sometimes we believe a lie about ourselves is the truth because we’ve got its identity wrong. We trust it and give it far more than its fair share of our energy.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“Harper once read an article about hummingbirds, and how with certain kinds, the sunlight becomes a prism through their wings and the prism becomes a rainbow. All that's left is the shadow of the little bird in the photo and the rainbow wings that carry it through gardens. Moving from beauty to beauty, of kept promises with each open, living flower. Everlasting hope. Everlasting covenant.
Even dead seeds make roots, and roots underground sprout blooms, and the rain falls, and in due time and in due season the hummingbird returns, looking for nectar and hoping to find a harvest. Carrying her story in her rainbow wings, from generation to generation.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“Life didn't come until Ezekiel spoke to the breath."
"What does that mean?" Harper hesitated. She had the strangest sensation of breathlessness, like after a long hike into high altitude just before cresting a mountain.
"Well, it's resurrection. From the ashes. From the dust. From the dead things. Your problem is, you're looking at the bones instead of breathing." Daddy sighed. "Maybe your dream was never about a shop at all. Maybe there's a second command, Harper Girl. Another place where you're supposed to breathe life."
Harper looked down to the blouse in her lap. To the thread and the needle.
She thought of Millie's buttons.
And then hope---glorious and beautiful hope---filled the landscape of her heart as the sunrise scatters new light over the mountaintops.
Of course! Why hadn't she seen it before? All this time, she had been focused on the store. But her gifting, her dream, was so much more than that.
Her gifting was repairing the broken places. Mending forgotten tears and weak seams. Breathing life back into the fabrics that told stories, into the buttons that bind them.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“But you also can't ignore the thing that keeps your soul alive, because I believe God puts that sort of stuff in us for a reason. That He speaks to us through it. God is faithful, and when He calls you to something, He will also give you the means, even if it doesn't look as expected.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“Harper planted her ballet flats against the cobblestone street while the white bow at the back of her blouse flapped in the breeze. Flowers in pinks and purples caught on the breeze and floated over wrought-iron cemetery walls.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“But when I got that satchel home and studied it, the colors of the thread were like this faint memory. Faded by time---sort of the way you remember little grooves in the wall from when you were a kid or your favorite television characters. A shadow of what used to be.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“She breathed in the sweet air deeply. Gardenias, if she wasn't mistaken. She once had a gardenia bush back at home, and sometimes when it was blooming, she'd crack open her bedroom window to get whiffs of the smell all night, then wake up sweaty because gardenias always bloomed in May, except every so often, when a deep-summer flower would bloom well past its season.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“Millie had moxie. Franklin had seen enough of life to recognize it. A woman traveling by herself across the States? He had to respect her.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“The next morning, a group of ladies with large beaded earrings and grey hair curled from here to high heaven clustered around a kitchen table lined with green Depression glass.
They had a saying around here. The higher the hair, the closer to God. And if that were true, well, the women of the Holy City would be a shoe-in when it came time for the rapture.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“How could he do that to his own family?"
Daddy seemed to sense there was more to Harper's empathy. He reached across the table and gave her hand a big squeeze. "Don't know. Some folks aren't worth their weight in salt if you ask me." Daddy glanced over his shoulder toward the boy on the pier.
Harper pulled a claw off her crab and used it to point toward the other pier. She'd never even met the stepfather and was ready to throw the crab claw right in his face.
"Sweetheart." It was a your-compassion-is-acting-up-again warning, not an admonishment.
Harper blinked, forcing herself back to the present. "You're right. This dinner is a celebration, after all. You caught enough this morning to feed the whole county." She smiled at Daddy, proud of how hard he worked, then looked back down at the crab and slowly broke off the other claw. She hesitated when it made an unexpected pop.
"You're thinking about that crab getting caught, aren't you?"
Harper set the food back down on her plate and let her laughter go free. "How did you know?"
Daddy grinned. "That's my girl. Always considering the oxygen-deprived crustaceans.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street

“Funny thing about shadows. They made even the smallest things into monsters or fairies or whatever folks wanted.”
― Ashley Clark, The Dress Shop on King Street