Write My Name Across the Sky Quotes

“My gift has always been an ability to be happy. It sounds small until you live in the world for a while.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“but mostly I am friendly. My gift has always been an ability to be happy. It sounds small until you live in the world for a while.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“The great tragedy of aging is not the loss of the supple body but the illusions we are forced to leave behind, one after the other, like a string of pearls from a necklace.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“But life doesn’t care if you like something. It gives you choices. It’s up to you to decide which things are right for you.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“I know how much the ordinary dumb people of the world annoy me, so it’s hard to imagine how much worse it would be if you thought at the speed of light and everyone else thought at the speed of a tricycle.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“The great tragedy of aging is not the loss of the supple body but the illusions we are forced to leave behind, one after the other, like a string of pearls from a necklace. That all will be well, that dreams can come true, that we can always do what we wish, that sacrifice and sorrow are not inevitable.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“the moment is ordinary and precious beyond words.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“You should go see her. She misses you.” “It’s just been busy.” A lie, but I missed the way things had been so much the last time I visited Deborah that I just can’t do it. It underlined all the echoey emptiness that is my life these days. “I’ll make it happen soon.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“That all will be well, that dreams can come true, that we can always do what we wish, that sacrifice and sorrow are not inevitable.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“In New York City on a February morning nearly fifty years later, the faintest pale light begins to limn the buildings. A movie, a romantic adventure. It still plays that way in my imagination. And yet, unlike in a movie, I will now pay the consequences of my foolish actions. So many years later, when I have finally begun to offer something of value to the world, something that heals the wounds of time and life, I will have to flee, leave it all behind. I can’t bear it. Worse, though, how can I bear prison? Either way, I will no longer live the life I so love. A tear stings my eye. I don’t want to give this up. This home, these nieces of mine, my Instagram world, this full and satisfying life. Wallowing has never been my style. But . . . where will I go? Who will be there when I arrive? In the dark, I let myself shed tears of regret. My phone rings in my hand, startling me. The screen says Asher. My heart drops. “Asher? Is everything all right?” “Sam is in the hospital. Intensive care.” And suddenly the vistas of faraway lands disappear, and I see myself in prison gray, because I cannot leave my niece. I won’t. “I’ll be right there.” Chapter Eighteen Sam The next time I awaken, my headache is vaguely less horrific. It’s still there, pulsing around the skin of my brain, and I feel dizzy and strange, but I can also actually see a little bit. There are no windows, so I can’t tell what time it is. An IV pumps drugs into my arm, and a machine beeps my heartbeat. I swing my head carefully to the right, and there is Asher, sound asleep. He looks terrible, his skin pale and greasy, his hair unkempt. The vision from my dream pops up, of him balding and older, our two little boys,”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“The public only wants art that’s like all the other art it has seen.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“The great tragedy of aging is not the loss of the supple body but the illusions we are forced to leave behind,”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“But music is meant to be shared. It’s communication. The music itself taking life through an instrument or a voice, then reaching into the hearts and bodies of other people, and coming back. I never feel so alive as when I’m playing for people, with them. My heart lifts a little.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“but life is patterns, isn’t it? Patterns and routines create sanity where nothing else can.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“My gift has always been an ability to be happy.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“belong”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“Ambition and children are not always the best fit, not for women.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“LA pretends to be a land of eccentrics, but it’s not. It’s a land of youth and vitality and sunshine, while New York is a land of brains and accomplishments. Too much about money these days, but that seems to be a disease that has infected the entire world. I”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“Is it wrong of me to wish children on them? I don’t know. Ambition and children are not always the best fit, not for women.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“But childhood is fleeting. A relationship with a child is a rich and rewarding thing, but it is a relationship and therefore simply a part of a person’s life, not the whole.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“It’s the best part of this surprise influencer business, the pleasure I find in the connections with strangers. Women, almost entirely, who want to believe their lives are still valuable and still have meaning, even if they’re seventy or eighty or, in some cases, ninety. I help them feel seen.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky