This Place of Wonder Quotes

“I don’t bring podcasts or music with me. I want to hear whatever the earth has to tell me.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“Feeding people is my love language,”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“Bookstores can solve any problem, at least for a little while.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“If you let people into the secrets of your life, the worst of it will always be at the forefront of their minds.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“Only you know what your boundaries are, Maya. You have to find them.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“We’re all broken, says my therapist’s voice. I somehow have always felt more broken than most, but maybe that’s not actually true. Keep your head where your feet are.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“And that’s all there is to say. I bend over and let myself grieve him, grieve the time I lost not speaking to him. I let go of all the things he should have been, and allow myself to love the things he was.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“Only people without the kind of wounds she and I carried think you need to live it all over again. Not everything can be forgiven. Not everything can be healed.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“Not for the millions and millions of people who are also plagued with this addictive thing in a world where it’s perfectly normal to drink, and keep drinking, and laugh about going overboard and even blacking out, and make Mommy-wine memes about the stresses of parenthood driving you to the bottle, and you have to explain why you don’t drink rather than why you do. If people quit smoking, the world says, “Oh hey, good for you.” If you quit drinking, they peer at you and say, “Why?”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“Now that I know the truth about his childhood, our deep connection makes all the more sense. We were both lost children, and came together to make sure our girls were not lost. We might have had a lot of flaws, the two of us, but we gave our”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“The truth is, when I arrived here, I was exhausted from years of foster homes, where I had to stay on my toes, then scrambling through undergrad, then grad school, trying to figure out how to make a name for myself, make a mark. Survival takes a lot of work if you’re an orphan woman in America.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“I’d grown fascinated with the tipping points in the sixties and seventies and eighties, when women moved from not being able to open a credit card account in their own names to running successful businesses of all kinds, like Meadow Sweet Organic Farms,”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“and soul, and I want you to live a good life. I want you to love people without reservation. I want you to have children and name one after me and tell them about me. I want you to dance. I want you to cry. I want you to be fully in every minute and really live it.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“Booze is a demanding, jealous, exhausting lover.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“It was in bad shape when we first toured it, packed to the ceilings in some rooms with”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“I just walk. I don’t bring podcasts or music with me. I want to hear whatever the earth has to tell me.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“That’s the thing about grief. It spirals up and up and up, revisiting us again and again, reaching out with electrified tentacles to sting us when we least expect it.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“The best thing I ever did was love you.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“I want to set you free, so that you can soar like the powerful bird you were meant to be.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“We might have had a lot of flaws, the two of us, but we gave our children a good childhood, so much better than the ones we’d known.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“And books are always a source of comfort. Bookstore, library, even a bookmobile, I’m happy.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“Because your mommy needs you, baby.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“I love you and I think you love me. Life is not always tidy, but we don’t have to suffer in every possible way.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“I somehow have always felt more broken than most, but maybe that’s not actually true. Keep your head where your feet are.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“There’s something in me that’s just broken. We’re all broken,”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“We’re all broken,”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“The longing for it burns in my chest right now. I can close my eyes and imagine it, that sharp citrus flavor pouring down my esophagus, easing every nerve in my body, head to toe. Making everything go away. Stop. Making it all stop hurting, making my thoughts stop whirling around with such urgency. I can’t believe I will never— My sponsor’s voice nudges me. Stay where your feet are.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“Love like an ocean fills me, moves through me, uncontainable, inexpressibly huge.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“His head tilts and mine tilts the other way and we dive into kissing like it will end climate change.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“Forgive me. I am sometimes at the mercy of a patriarchal society that judges women very harshly.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder