The Keeper of Happy Endings Quotes

“There is a grief worse than death. It is the grief of a life half-lived. Not because you don’t know what could have been—but because you do. You realize too late that it was there for the taking—right there in your hands—and you let it slip away. Because you let something—or someone—keep you apart.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“I understand that part, not wanting the world to see your sadness. You think you’re the only one, singled out by fate to suffer. You’re not, of course, but it feels that way. The rest of the world is moving forward, living their lives and dreaming their dreams, while you’re frozen, forever suspended in that terrible moment when your world stopped turning and the ground suddenly fell away. You exist in a void, where everything’s empty and endlessly dark, until little by little the light becomes unbearable.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“We’re all a collection of our stories, chérie. Our joys and sorrows. Our loves and losses. That is who we are, a tally of all our agonies and ecstasies. Sometimes the agonies leave a mark, like a bruise on the soul. We do our best to hide them from the world, and from ourselves too. Because we’re afraid of being fragile. Of being damaged. That’s what makes us kindred spirits, Rory—our bruises.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“There are times for holding on in this life and times for letting go. You must learn to know the difference. —Esmée Roussel, the Dress Witch”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“Dreams are like waves . . . You have to wait for the right one to come along, the one that has your name on it . . . This dream has your name all over it.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“Adding beauty to the world isn’t vanity, chérie. It’s a calling.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“In France we say, tu me manques. It means ‘you are missing from me.’ Not I miss you—the way Americans say it—but you are missing from me. The part of you that is a part of me . . . is gone. This is how it is for her. There’s a void in her life where you used to be, and she doesn’t know how to fill it.” Rory”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“When so much has been uprooted—so many things lost—one must seek comfort in rituals. Even the sad ones.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“There is a grief worse than death. It is the grief of a life half-lived.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“Without faith, even our work is doomed to fail. Faith is everything.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“How a person behaves toward us is never about us, Rory. It’s about them.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“The truth is I can be rather childlike at times. Sullen and immovable. And yes, difficult. I suppose that’s what comes from a life that’s denied you everything you ever wanted.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“And you have this, Rory. Don’t ever say it’s nothing. It’s the very opposite of nothing. Adding beauty to the world isn’t vanity, chérie. It’s a calling.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“You have no idea what that’s like, do you? To wake up in the morning and not have the will to put your feet on the floor, to shower and dress and go out into the world where everywhere you look, life is galloping off without you. You’ve never lost someone you cared about.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“Alas, we women seldom get the life we would choose for ourselves. Instead, our lot is chosen for us, by those who claim to know best, and before we know it, we’ve been shaped into someone we don’t recognize, remade in someone else’s image.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“In France we say, tu me manques. It means ‘you are missing from me.’ Not I miss you—the way Americans say it—but you are missing from me. The part of you that is a part of me . . . is gone. This is how it is for her. There’s a void in her life where you used to be, and she doesn’t know how to fill it.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“How a person behaves toward us is never about us, Rory. It’s about them. Your mother acted as she did because she felt threatened. You’re hers, and she wanted me to know it. Because she’s afraid of losing you—and of being alone.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“To let a stranger into my life, after so many years of self-protection, to feel again after the blissful numbness. Like my hands after the fire, when the nerves began to regenerate. The pain was so excruciating that all I wanted was to be numb again.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“Because that’s how their relationship worked. They’d simply gloss over the episode as if it never happened. One of them would make the first move, some small gesture of conciliation, and the other would follow. Advance, retreat, advance again.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“Much can go awry between the asking and the doing, for that is when a union is most at risk—before the charm has been woven and the vows exchanged. The Spell Weaver must be on her guard against any and all tempests, and there will almost certainly be tempests.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“This chance I spoke of . . . it will test your heart. It might even break it. But the most precious gifts always come at the highest price. I learned this too late . . . which is why I’m telling you now.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“I press her back against her pillows, hushing her like a child in the throes of a nightmare. I tell her to close her eyes and I stroke her hair, trying to recall a time when the roles were reversed and she was the one to comfort me. I can’t. She’s never been that kind of mother. Still, I can’t deny her that small bit of tenderness. Not when her heart is breaking.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“I turn away from her, stung by her harshness. Ours has always been an awkward relationship, filled with chilly truces and prickly silence, her disapproval always there, like a current running between us, because I’m a reminder of past mistakes.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“Lovers wound one another for many reasons, but in the end, fear is always at the root of it. It’s a hard thing, perhaps the hardest of all, to trust when we’re afraid—to open ourselves to the risk of forgiveness. But forgiveness is the greatest magic of all. Forgiveness makes all things new.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“come hell or high water,”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“I feel her anger in my bones, the tug-of-war between mother and daughter. It’s a clash as old as time itself, for there have always been mothers who knew best. Just as there have always been daughters who knew better. It’s a contradiction that is part of every woman’s journey—the need to shape in one’s own image versus the aversion to being shaped at all.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“If you’re alive, you can start again.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“A bride must remember that in being bound to her lover, she is also bound to his family, and that we make no claims with regard to the success of those relationships. Such is not our work. —Esmée Roussel, the Dress Witch”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“The panic in her eyes is so raw, I feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I narrow my gaze, certain she knows something I don’t. “What reason could they have to come for me, Maman?” Her eyes glitter, fever mixed with fear. “Don’t you see? They don’t need a reason! But they’ll find one. People always find a way to justify their hate—and give others an excuse to fall in line. They put words in people’s mouths, plant them like viruses, then watch them spread. People here in Paris—people we know—will be infected. And when the fever spreads, they’ll point the finger at anyone they think might save them. Please, I beg you, go to Lilou.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“We can’t comprehend the sheer scope of lawlessness and barbarity, the gut-wrenching need that exists in other places. The lack of basic humanity.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings