Home of the American Circus Quotes

“Kids don't need a life where nothing bad ever happens. What they need is someone who's there for them when the bad stuff happens.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“The question still bounces around my head all the time:
Why is a man more important than an elephant?
What if..., I think again and again,..what if he isn't?”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“I am keenly aware that everything good is fragile and fleeting. I used to use the threat of loss as my reason to sidestep joy, but the bad things happen anyway...”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“Step. It’s work to prevent what’s spinning in my head from getting too close to my heart”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“Kids don’t need a life where nothing bad ever happens. What they need is someone who’s there for them when the bad stuff happens.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“don’t have words for mourning people when their souls leave us long before their body is gone.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“I’m always surprised,” he says, “by how many big moments feel more like a whimper than a bang.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“Parents,” Bee says, pausing to make a moment out of saying something very wise, “are not supposed to make their children swim upstream. You weren’t there to care about their problems, you were supposed to be cared for.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“Not only do I know what I’m doing, but I believe I know what I’m doing, and if you let yourself find it, there’s joy in feeling competent.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“started to understand the fundamental problem of history—how few facts exist without the filter of perspective.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“It seems like a loss I should have already reckoned with, but I haven't had enough markers for the passing of time.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“...it forces me to understand in my soul that nothing will ever be the way it was.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“...no one teaches us how to live with the vestiges of the people we lose.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“We understand that the incomplete quest for truth of another person isn’t as important as just letting them be.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“Our brains don’t seem to mark time in persistent unhappiness it all feels endless, until it ends.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“But the true secrets of myself are always more quiet and sad than I want them to be.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“In the version of this house that lives loudest in my mind my mother is yelling how ungrateful I am.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“We don’t have words for mourning people when their souls leave us long before their body is gone.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“I used to believe I could tell who was home and what mood they were in by the way the air felt when I walked through the front door.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“The unknown depth of consequence.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“The books I take aren’t necessarily my favorites but ones I know I’ll never find again, not even in another antique store. I’ve read every one, loved the books I didn’t even particularly like, because they felt like friends, they were better than people.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“I want her to believe I am with her in dreams so she’ll never have a nightmare and feel like she’s alone.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“For the people I keep and the ones I couldn’t with my unending love.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“I stare at the chipped, black polish on her chewed fingernails and try so hard not to cry. I was going to be there for all of it. I wanted to be.

When I look up, her eyes are teary, too. She was like that when she was little; we’re both like that. If we’re not actively trying to block out the feelings of the people around us, they seep in and hurt like our own. Or, maybe she’s having her own feelings now—maybe I’m feeling some of hers.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus

“I wish when I ran away to start over, I'd actually started, instead of stalling, and I'd never had a reason to look back.”
― Allison Larkin, Home of the American Circus