When the Stars Go Dark Quotes

“Getting your heart broken is the privilege of being human,”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“If you think about it, most of us have very little choice about what we’re going to become or who we’re going to love, or what place on earth chooses us, becoming home.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“Sometimes our dreams can be the most revealing things about us. Who we are when no one’s looking, who we believe we’re truly supposed to be, if we can get there.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“Dreams can tell us a lot of things,” I go on. “They’re a kind of map of the inner life. Sometimes thinking of who we might someday be is the only way we can get through the reality of who we actually are.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“Some people feel out of place when they’re young, not because anything’s wrong with them, but because there’s something special that sets them apart. Something they haven’t figured out yet.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“Because everyone wants to be looked for, whether they realize it or not.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“Young writers, they’re almost always autobiographical, even when they don’t mean to be.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“It’s not what you carry, but how you can learn to carry it. You need to heal yourself. Your child self too, Anna. Make room for her. Find a way to let her in.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“There’s an old ghost story about that, I remember, how the devil steals souls by asking for them openly. He isn’t a thief, but a master manipulator. The real danger, or so the story goes, isn’t in the devil himself, but in not knowing you have a choice to turn him away.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“I wasn’t raised to acknowledge my own feelings, let alone stick up for myself like that.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“Sorry was maybe the loneliest feeling of all, I understood, because it only brought you back to yourself.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“What is all the suffering for if not so we can see how alike we are, and not alone? Where will the mercy come from, if not from us?”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“The world needs an army of Wandas—strong, sarcastic, unafraid women who say what they think and act straightforwardly, without apology or permission. Women who roar instead of flinch.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“How some victims don’t have even a whisper of no inside them. Because they don’t believe the life they have is theirs to save.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“He’s never been a throwaway kid. Never experienced the world in a woman’s body, or a girl’s. Never had a reason to confuse love with suffering.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“The universe doesn't do random.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“The people we love never leave us, Anna. You know that already. That’s what I mean by spirit. I mean love.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. —Frederick Buechner”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“Getting your heart broken is the privilege of being human, Eden used to say. I didn’t know what she meant then. My heart had been broken lots of times, and I was supposed to say thank you? Now, all these years later, I’m at least starting to see that she was really talking about the whole journey. That it’s impossible to be alive and not get hurt sometimes, not if you’re doing it right.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“You know, we don’t always understand what we’re living inside of, or how it will matter. We can guess all we want and prepare, too, but we never know how it’s going to turn out.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“a lot of the time we don’t tell anyone because we can’t.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“the damage has been simmering for years and has no doubt found other ways to erupt, in feelings of shame or hopelessness, drawing her unconsciously to people and situations that echo or approximate the original pain.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“If you think about it, most of us have very little choice about what we’re going to become or who we’re going to love, or what place on earth chooses us, becoming home. All we can do is go when we’re called, and pray we’ll still be taken in.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“It's not what happens to us that matters most, but how we can learn to carry it.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“It’s not what you carry, but how you can learn to carry it.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“In my years as a detective and particularly with Searchlight, I’ve learned so much about cycles of violence in family systems. But cycles of silence can be just as dangerous—and they repeat through generations with startling consistency. A mother’s dieting becomes her daughter’s obsessive control over bonsai trees. Secret glaring infidelity becomes wordless assent and then emptiness. Cameron was exposed to all of this. Silver spoon or no, Emily had fed her powerlessness.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“Getting your heart broken is the privilege of being human.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“But what does it all add up to? What is all the suffering for if not so we can see how alike we are, and not alone? Where will the mercy come from, if not from us?”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“The ghosts of the kids you've helped, they hang on you like stars.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark

“When things got hard and you felt shaky, she liked to say, you could hit your knees wherever you were, and the world would be there to catch you.”
― Paula McLain, When the Stars Go Dark