The Starfish Sisters Quotes

“So what? So what if it ends? What if he dies? What if the world ends? What if? Would you really trade having this . . . joy . . . right now for some awful thing that might not even happen?” “I know what you’re saying, but it’s not really that easy, is it?” “It’s only harder if you insist. Don’t take things away from yourself before you even get to enjoy them.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“I think you can be both an introvert and an extrovert at the same time. Be a loner and also like people. You can be more than one thing.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“Well, how would you know you were happy if you were never sad?”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“In this room, I am fully myself. Here, I am a maker, an artist with a vision of the world that is entirely my own. Here, surrounded by color and memory and paper of a thousand sorts, and paintbrushes and pencils, and rolls of butcher paper to cover the solid walnut table in the middle of the room, I am me,”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“Our God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“Motherhood is a dangerous journey, full of pitfalls and terrors. Grandmotherhood is more a dance on a summer evening, full of love and hope. Or at least that’s how it feels to me.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“Ruth Bader Ginsburg was on the court into her late eighties. She wasn’t propping up a bunch of men. She placed her body squarely in front of them.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“I like the rain. It gives me room to think.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“What if? Would you really trade having this . . . joy . . . right now for some awful thing that might not even happen?”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“At home, lying in the dark,”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“As someone said, “Men don’t age better than women, they’re just allowed to age.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“Motherhood is a dangerous journey, full of pitfalls and terrors. Grandmotherhood is more a dance on a summer evening, full of love and hope. Or”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“One of the things my therapist has been working on with me is my wrecked nervous system. Right now it feels shattered, maybe broken beyond repair. All these years I’ve turned the traumas of my life into bricks I could use to climb up and out, but now all those steps are crumbling and—”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“I’m still shaking, but less violently. It’s turned into a fine trembling that runs below my skin, through my veins. I plant my palms against the counter and try to breathe, all the way in, all the way out, but my body remembers—”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“Grandmotherhood is more a dance on a summer evening, full of love and hope. Or at least that’s how it feels to me.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“sometimes you have to be a little bit unhappy to get to the next place in your life.” She looks away. “I never want to be unhappy.” “I know. Me either. Unfortunately, everybody is sometimes.” “But why?” “Well, how would you know you were happy if you were never sad?” Her look of recognition is so acute I have to stifle a chuckle. “I never thought of that!” “It would all be the same and you wouldn’t be able to appreciate anything.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“Old men are not cast as props for their families. Why is it so impossible for Hollywood to even see a woman over fifty? What happened to wisewomen and elders? It’s a pet peeve lately. Georgia O’Keeffe was over sixty when she finally started traveling the world. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was on the court into her late eighties. She wasn’t propping up a bunch of men. She placed her body squarely in front of them.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“My life changed so much that I felt like the frog in Neil Diamond’s song “I Am . . . I Said,” a frog with dreams of royalty who became a king.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“So I reluctantly submitted to the same full makeup treatments, and when she spun me around—surprise!—I didn’t look like a model.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“We would shop for each other and then meet at Walgreens for lunch and eat strawberry shortcake and exchange presents.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“on”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“once in a while it would be nice to be the one noticed.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“America, my dad says, takes revolution and sells it back to you for a dollar ninety-nine.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“of the night, talking about movies or books or politics or the world, whatever, and I mentioned that I was worried about Suze because all the lights were on. He suggested he could bring her down to me, and the way that landed in my gut, I knew he was right. That’s a big favor, I said. Not really. Will you make me some of that rose petal tea?”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“It’s so hard to love people, knowing they might die, knowing they might not always be there for a million reasons. I have always worried about people being taken from me, long before they were.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“good things happen all the time, too. You just have to focus as much as you can on the good things.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“life has a habit of pulling the rug out from under you.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“Don’t take things away from yourself before you even get to enjoy them.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“we were so much in love we lit the skies.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“Because I was happy in my own skin, I was happy for her.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters