Sometimes I look at the lives of the people around me and I wonder if we aren’t all destined to leave a trail of damage.
Sometimes for our sanity own sanity we just have to look at the bigger picture.
She just wasn’t sure she had yet been to the place she was homesick for.
I’m giving you this because there is not much that makes me happy any more, but you do.
You always have one foot in two places. You can never be truly happy because, from the moment you leave, you are two selves, and wherever you are one half of you is always calling to the other.
Its not a matter of giving you a chance. I’ve watched you these six months becoming a whole different person, someone who is only just beginning to see her possibilities. You have no idea how happy that has made me. I don’t want you to be tied to me, to my hospital appointments, to the restrictions on my life. I don’t want you to miss out on the things someone else could give you.
Sometimes just getting through each day requires almost superhuman strength.
If someone likes you, they will stay with you; if they don’t like you enough to stay with you, they aren’t worth being with anyway. You know that. You are a sensible, mature.
You live. And you throw yourself into everything and try not to think about the bruises.
Our eyes locked. And in that moment everything shifted. I saw what I had really done. I saw that I could be somebody’s center, his reason for staying. I saw that I could be enough.
You know the worst thing about a man hitting you?” Margery said finally. “Ain’t the hurt. It’s that in that instant you realize the truth of what it is to be a woman. That it doesn’t matter how smart you are, how much better at arguing, how much better than them period. It’s when you realize they can always shut you up with a fist. Just like that.” She mulled over it for a Monet, then straightened up, and flashed Alice a tight smile. “Course, you know that only happens till you learn to hit back harder.
I know we can do this. I know it’s not how you would have chosen it, but I know I can make you happy. And all I can say in that you make me... you make me into someone I couldn’t even imagine. You make me happy, even when you’re awful, I would rather be with you – even the you that you seem to think is diminished – than with anyone else in the world.
That some things are a gift, even if you don’t get to keep them.
Books are what teach you about life. Books teach you empathy.
But then I knew better than anyone how the persona you chose to present to the world could be very different from what was really inside. I knew how grief could make you behave in ways you couldn’t even begin to understand.
She was always tired, these days. She put on one of those smiles that wasn’t really a smile at all, and they went on.
How could I convey the way those short months had changed the way I felt about everything? The way he had skewed my world so totally that is made no sense without him.
If someone wanted to be with you, after all, they just made it happen.
My voice, when it emerged, cracked a little. “I’m not in love with a ghost.
You know what makes me feel down? The way you keep promising to live some kind of a life, then sacrifice yourself to every waif and stray who comes across your path.