The Two Lives of Sara Quotes

“There's no such thing as a perfect so make peace with that now. Save yourself a lot of tears later.”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara

“Friendships are strange evolving collections of laughter and fights and secrets, this rarified brew of humanity you choose to share with another person.”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara

“Will made me say it. Worse, he made me feel it. What will that do to me, to him, to all of us?
How dangerous is my love?”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara

“Right. Wrong. Justice. Oppression. It's all relative. We want these ideas to be concrete, but they're fluid... There's the world we want and the world we got.”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara

“grief and loss don’t go by a calendar, and they really don’t give a damn about your sanity or your schedule.”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara

“Don’t expect people to praise you. Have enough confidence in what you do so you never need anyone else to make you feel like a whole person.”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara

“To be the first doesn’t mean glory or applause or fame. Most times, it means fear and sacrifice. Sometimes being first means death.”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara

“God, if I ever believed in him, can’t be this cruel. Mr. Vanellys said everyone needs a little mercy. So have mercy on me, God. On my Jonas. Have mercy on the idea of hope, the belief living can’t be this constant nightmare, this infinite parade of hopeless memories. My life cannot be clutching my husband to me as his breathing slows, as the lids of his dark-rimmed eyes slowly flutter open and shut. This can’t be my last moment with him; he struggles to breathe and yet his lips still somehow murmur to me, “It’s okay, Sara. It’ll be okay.”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara

“Women have children every day. No need to get so dramatic about it, Sara-girl.” It’s more responsibility. It’s more money. A lot of it. Most important it’s taking a part of my heart, putting it into another living being and hoping to God I do right by them. Because I know, in the most desperate way, what happens when you fail a child, when you don’t protect them. And I don’t know if I can divide my heart into yet another portion. One for Lebanon. One for Jonas. One for this baby. What would I have left of myself?”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara

“Money brings out the worst. The need for it, for the power it commands, creates a hole deep enough nothing can fill it and there’s nothing you wouldn’t do to keep what you have. Hurt a man. Kill a boy. That’s a pittance to some. All for dyed green paper with pictures of dead white men.”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara

“These introductions aren’t overwhelming. Memorizing and categorizing people in church isn’t hard when you’ve had to do it all your life. The polite faces and curious eyes. The listening ears and ready mouths are as much the foundation of us, of black churches, as the brick and concrete holding together the temples in which they worship. In some way I’m comforted by this lack of change; that north or south, east or west, older nosy people are always going to be around. No matter what.”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara

“All God’s children got one thing in common, my lovely girl, they ain’t perfect.” Momma smiles at me in the living room. “God’s children can still make mistakes. Be thoughtless or lie. Do the wrong things. But God’s children, flawed as we are, the true ones, we always try and do better. So if you struggle or you see someone struggling, seek understanding. You don’t know the wars people fight on the inside.”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara

“You look good, son.” Amos hobbles to the front room. Amos looks good in her eyes because she needs him to. Because if he’s anything else, if he’s back to gambling and drinking, then how would she explain to herself that despite doing all she could, her son is still...broken? Something that came from you can’t be made whole and despite doing everything you know to do; you may be the very reason he faltered in the first place. Who wants to live with that? So, you don’t think about your faults. You don’t think about his. You live in a space where everything can be fine if you convince yourself it is. And if anyone tries to show you otherwise, they are the enemy of the counterfeit peace you’ve built for yourself. And there is the adversary of progress, the inability to fix yourself or someone else.”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara

“It is precious to let yourself be broken for a while. That doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you trust yourself enough to let go.”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara

“Everything before us. The people we were before we met; the things that happened to us in the past aren’t liabilities, they’re the tiny fires by which we’re shaped and molded to love one another.”
― Catherine Adel West, The Two Lives of Sara