Eating Yellow Paint Quotes

“I miss our bedroom talks. I miss the nights when we'd stay awake for hours being silly. I miss Sunday mornings when I crawled into her bed, the two of us side by side, whispering dreams and secrets, our bare mosquito-bitten legs tangled in bedsheets, knobby knees pressed together as we curled around each other in laughter.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“life is like the weather, unpredictable, with chances of rain, and sunny days interrupted by thunderstorms and blizzards. But even with the uncontrollable weather, a person has choices. You can grab an umbrella, wear thick socks and snow boots, put on a hat or jacket, or lather up with sunscreen. Now some people don’t consider their choices and make bad ones. Those people will stand outside in a snowstorm without a coat and blame their being cold on the weather.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“It doesn’t take any effort for an ordinary person to be happy during happy times, but it takes an extraordinary person to stand in front of critics, spin kindness from regret and tears, and turn wasted days into magical moments.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“Time takes you on a peculiar journey, twisting and turning you around a million minutes and seasons, weaving your yesterdays and tomorrows into a tapestry of days, and every single second is part of an eternity.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“I knew at that moment that I had learned one of my biggest life lessons, that good people sometimes snap. And a broken person can be fixed.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“It’s crazy to think that ten years ago I was on a desperate search for happiness. The hunt took me to another state, around the city, and through four years of college. I searched for bliss in textbooks, lectures, and lovers. I tracked joy in experiences, best friends, failed relationships, and lost jobs, only to learn the lesson that Granny Crackers tried to teach me so long ago: “Happiness lives inside of you.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“The only bad thing about living a long life is all the people you lose along that journey.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“Perhaps, because children are sensitive souls, unarmed and vulnerable, easily tenderized by pounding days, they feel everything more deeply.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“We all have an ember of madness that lives inside us. Given sufficient oxygen, it becomes a torch. Carrying a torch is dangerous, but it can save you in your darkest hour. My life has taught me that people break, become unhinged, fall completely apart, and then recover. After all, without mud, there would be no lotus flower.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“That’s when my search for happiness began, during stage-four cancer. I spent all my time looking for light in the darkness, hunting for a silver lining. I captured painful moments, trying to discover anything good going on. Where was the grace in dying? I wanted some sort of proof that peace lives in pain. I think I was looking for God. Sometimes I found him. Now it’s become an obsession. I look for God all the time, in every dark and dingy corner of my world, in every sad moment of my life. When I find him or her I take a pic and write a poem.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“We are a family dominated by women over the generations. Granny Crackers, Mimi, Ava, (and yes, even Mo) and I are branches of the same tree, our roots twisted together under earth and soil. We are leaf and limbs connected by stem and twig, an oxymoron of strength and flowers, rough bark and luscious fruit.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“Gossip drifts down the street like plastic bags, whirling in the wind. Theories are being tossed to the curb like litter.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“Ya know, Savannah Jo, Buddha said that anger is a hot coal, and by holding it to throw at someone, you end up burning yourself. Baby, you can’t take your mama’s leaving as personal. Nothing others do is because of you. People have their own reality and perceptions. And sometimes things need to be broken so they can be fixed.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“My mother reminds me of her painting palette. Her vibrant moods are swirls of color. She is witty, kooky orange one minute and reckless, sexy red the next. She is shades of sunshine and sunflower petals, and she is a circle of black, burrowing in a deep hole of depression and sadness. My mom is sincerely flawed and beautiful, making it hard not to fall in love with her.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“After my mother left, sadness moved into our home like a rude, unwanted houseguest. Depression was more than a feeling; it was a presence. Depression lounged on our furniture with its feet up, took over the TV, and invaded our space. Days felt monotonous and long. Everything was dull.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“She reminded me of the vacant houses that have taken over our neighborhood, ghost structures with boarded-up doors and crumbling walls. No longer strong, she was like a memory, or rather a silhouette of the spirit that used to live inside her, before the light in her eyes went out.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“I stared down at her, my gaze riveted. I couldn’t help myself. Silently I pressed her image into my mind, taking in every characteristic of my newfound hero. Her gnarled fingers like claws pressed the ground. Her white hair lifted in feathery wisps above tired and watery seafoam-green eyes. Her face reminded me of dried cracked earth, her story written in the deep wrinkled lines on her brown, suntanned skin. I had never seen anyone look frailer yet more fierce.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“Because I believe in you,” Granny Crackers responded. “It’s a lesson for all of you,” she said, pointing to everyone in the room. “In life, rare talents and great gifts seldom reveal themselves. It’s up to you to seize the moments. There is a time to be humble and a time to be proud. Ya got to know the difference. When it’s your turn to shine, do it big, bright, and completely unashamed.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“For me, time is much more fluid, both a rushing river and a stagnant pond. It seems like forever since Mimi died, and I’ve been stuck, floating in a lake of grief, yet she was here yesterday, just beyond the bend in the stream.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“Buttons are ordinary and homely, but they're also purposeful, and they hold things together. The collection of buttons reminded me of days, some shiny, most plain or dull, and several ugly as hell. When Ava placed the buttons in a random pattern, sides touching, they looked meaningful. At least they appeared intentional and each button significant.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“There are smart people and wise people. Smart people can tutor you in English or help you with math. Wise people teach you about life. It’s best if you have both smart and wise people in your circle. That’s not the case for me. That’s why I flunked algebra, but I know it’s possible and sane to love a broken mother.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“Child, you gotta do better than guess. You gotta know. I’ll tell you what the problem is. People go around confusing happiness with a place. They go off looking for it in oceans or in the mountains, spending life on some desperate search party to nowhere. Truth is, the only state where happiness lives is your state of mind. You have to find happiness where you are.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“The good mom of a bad child is like a musician without an instrument. My Mimi was like a pianist, up nights, mindlessly tapping her fingers on an invisible keyboard, desperately trying to save a lost melody.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“It’s small wonders that call a lost person home.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint

“Those of us who have found ourselves stuck here in Paris Village are part of a tribe, a cluster of people made of plaster and mud, an intermixing of races bound by common troubles. We make up a color wheel of faces from alabaster, ivory, beige, and khaki, to russet, cinnamon, mahogany, and coffee. Yes, we are an assorted box of chocolates, white to dark, fruits and nuts included.”
― Susie Newman, Eating Yellow Paint