Everybody has thoughts that shame them. You can’t control them coming in. But you don’t have to let them all out.
I am in agreement with Goethe, who said that every day one ought to ‘hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.’ I would add to this the need to love. Without it, the rest is dust.
I think the kind of love that comes after romantic love is the best, richest love of all. At some point, I think we all want someone we can look ugly around, reveal our vulnerabilities to, and, most important, trust. And as a former nurse, I found that when people are at their most vulnerable, at their “ugliest,” is when they’re the most beautiful. In this novel, I think true love is saying, “I see you wholly and I love you anyway.
I do not believe the loss of a child is something one ever overcomes. One puts on the faces one needs, but inside, one bleeds and bleeds.
Never think winter will last when spring is equally inevitable.
What does anyone say to anybody who used to be so important in her life, whom she’s not seen in such a long time? It seems to me that in situations like this, we’re all wondering the same thing: I’m still me; are you still you? A.
What Maddy has come to believe is that certain life circumstances make for people who walk with a psychic limp for all of their days. Never mind the progress they seem to make, peel back a few delicate layers and there it is: a stubborn doubting of worth; an inability to stand with conviction behind anything without wondering if they should be standing there at all; a sense that if they move in this direction, it’s wrong; and if they move in that direction, that’s wrong, too.
He tells her that, when Nola first died, he thought he’d die himself, of the sorrow.
I should have said “powder room.” That would evoke the image of me sitting before a beautiful gold mirror, a vase of fresh flowers nearby, freshening my makeup, rather than sitting on a toilet.
But finally my own version of God came to me in a dream, complete with a name: Corambe. He was a warm and compassionate being with a tender and unwavering regard for me. He had the humanity of Jesus and the radiant beauty of the angel Gabriel. He was graceful and poetic and ever attentive to my feelings. And though he was a male, he nonetheless dressed oftentimes in women’s clothes.
One thing about doing this kind of work, you develop a keen appreciation for the fact that you can walk. And see the sky. And feel the air on your face. And that you can check high and low and no, nothing in your body is hurting, not one thing. I.
One good thing about someone really liking something you have is that you appreciate it yourself all over again.
This is not a novel about a woman leaving home, but rather a human being finding her way back.
Nothing will brings lovers closer together than people trying to keep them apart.
Isn’t life funny. It could drive you crazy if you thought about it too much. Turn this way and that happens. Turn that way and this happens.
Souls are ageless and care nothing for external circumstances.
I could still taste and smell and hear and see,” she said. “I could still learn and I could still teach. I could still love and be loved. I had my mind and my spirit. And I had you.
I understood, that he was right in asking to be cremated. For if he was nowhere, he could be everywhere. As in, with me.
Healing hurts, but hurting heals.
Japanese tea ceremony; a way of honoring oneself by putting another’s needs first, the joy that could be found in intimate service... A conversation we’d had one night on the way home from a movie. I remember that night he’d put toothpaste on my brush before his own, then bowed, I smiled, but I’d understood too that such small gifts were one seed that blossomed in two hearts.