The Berry Pickers Quotes

“I found it strange that no word exists for a parent who loses a child. If children lose their parents, they are orphans. If a husband loses his wife, he’s a widower. But there’s no word for a parent who loses a child. I’ve come to believe that the event is just too big, too monstrous, too overwhelming for words. No word could ever describe the feeling, so we leave it unsaid.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Anger is exhausting. Holding on to it will drain the life out of you.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Time quickens the older you get, as if the universe is trying to push you toward the finish line, to make room for the younger, the stronger, to mark your brief place in history and move on.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“When you’re an only child, semi-imprisoned, books become more than paper between hard cardboard, more than the alphabet organized into words and printed on a page.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“THE DASH SADDENS ME. THE SIMPLICITY MISSES SO much. It doesn’t allow for all the downs that bring a person low or the joys that lift them up. All the bends and turns that make up a lifetime are flattened and erased. The dash on a tombstone is wholly inadequate. Everything around it is more remarkable. The name, etched in cursive or dignified fonts. Sometimes a photo is carved into the grey granite, giving life to the dead. Yet the dash, that line that carries the entire sum of a life within it, is unremarkable.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Hope is such a wonderful thing until it isn’t.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“All things take time. Grief can be wide and feel bottomless sometimes, but eventually, it begins to subside, to grow into something useful.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Alice once said that anger and sadness are just two different sides of the same coin.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“The need for conformity and for the attention of others can lead to a life of misery.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“I don’t have time for regret, or the emotional strength it requires. I see the world unfolding as it is meant to. Sometimes I have trouble finding meaning in the things that happen to me, but I assume that the universe knows what it’s doing.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“It’s funny what you remember when something goes wrong.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Let those tears flow. Alice always said that holding in tears is like holding in pee—it’s gonna hurt eventually, so you might as well let them go as soon as you feel them.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Every one of us alive today comes from something bad done to the family that came before us. You being alive is a goddamn miracle, so no more talk about sour blood. Own your mistakes, make amends and move on. We owe that to those who didn’t make it.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Own your mistakes, make amends and move on.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Did I get lonely? Of course, but those bouts of loneliness passed quickly, and I could always find comfort in my own company. Alice told me this is a strength that many people don’t have. The need for conformity and for the attention of others can lead to a life of misery.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“A scent can bypass logic, can circumvent time.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Light is more vibrant in the cold, like it knows that people are stuffed away in their houses, miserable from lack of sunshine, and it needs to put on a show.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“That’s why I found it strange that no word exists for a parent who loses a child. If children lose their parents, they are orphans. If a husband loses his wife, he’s a widower. But there’s no word for a parent who loses a child. I’ve come to believe that the event is just too big, too monstrous, too overwhelming for words. No word could ever describe the feeling, so we leave it unsaid.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“MARRIAGE IS A FUNNY THING. THERE ARE SO MANY people in the world, and you decide to commit the rest of your life, the rest of your emotional energy, to just one. You assume that the mysterious connection that ties you to one another will hold. A connection that can’t be trusted, one that probably manifests in that same mystical space where stories come from. A place that allows you to suspend your disbelief. Marriage assumes that you will bend and twist and adjust to one another. It assumes that your desires will forever be interconnected by the placement of a piece of gold around a finger. For many people this is true. I envy those people who can dig deep and find that thing that originally allowed them to believe they could spend their entire lives sleeping in the same bed, sit across the table from one another day in and day out, make a family, make memories, good and bad.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“There was love in that house, but none of us really knew what to do with it.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“I've found that money rarely helps with the things that are most important.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Words are powerful and funny things, said or unsaid.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“There are things more important in this world than taking credit,”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Until the day I die, and that isn’t too far away anymore, I will remember the sound of all those voices yelling Ruthie’s name.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“If my mother did anything exceptionally well, it was guilt. Guilt and the cleaning that came with it.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“A peace comes after the chaos of change. There’s a strange acceptance and quiet acknowledgement that the change has happened and now it’s time to navigate that odd time in between, before the final goodbye.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Time quickens the older you get, as if the universe is trying to push you toward the finish line, to make room for the younger, the stronger, to mark your brief place in history and move on. Our tenth Christmas without Father came in the blink of an eye.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“let the living speak. They have longer to atone for it.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“That’s why I found it strange that no word exists for a parent who loses a child. If children lose their parents, they are orphans. If a husband loses his wife, he is a widower. But there is no word for a parent who loses a child. I’ve come to believe that the event is just too big, too monstrous, too overwhelming for words. No word could ever describe the feeling, so we leave it unsaid.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers

“Even people who exude light and happiness have dark secrets. Sometimes, the lie becomes so entrenched it becomes the truth, hidden away in the deep recesses of the mind until death erases it, leaving the world a little different. Secrets and lies can take on a life of their own, they can be twisted and manipulated, or they can burst into the world from the mouth of someone just as they are starting to lose their mind.”
― Amanda Peters, The Berry Pickers