Guys would come and go; girlfriends were forever. They knew that.
In the market, tourists were still crowded around the fish stand. White-aproned vendors threw thirty-pound king salmons through the air to one another: at every toss, tourists snapped photographs.
This is only your first test. Learn from it.
She was a star, burning so brightly it broke apart, pieces flying, light spraying.
Mama and dad had run off together; theirs was a beautiful, romantic story of love against all odds. Mama had quit high school and “lived on love.” That was how she always put it, the fairy tale. Now Leni was old enough to know that like all fairy tales, theirs was filled with thickets and dark places and broken dreams, and runaway girls.” – pg 23.
She cried at last, for all the times she’d had been with her father and all the times she hadn’t, and for all the times she never would be. When the tears had worn themselves out and left her dry, she got unsteadily to her feet.
Home is part of us. It’s in the scars we have on our knees and elbows, in the memories that surface when we sleep. I don’t think you can ever really leave.
She knew sorrow would hit her later, hit her hard, the sudden, aching realization that her father was Gone, that she’d never pick up the phone and hear his voice again, or go to her mailbox and get a letter written in his bold, sweeping hand.
You are my sunlight in the dark and the ground beneath my feet. Because of you, I can survive. I hope that you can find strength in me, too, V. That because of me, you will find a way to be strong. Hold my daughter tightly tonight, and tell her that somewhere far away, her papa is thinking of her. And tell her I will return.
Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” “Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. – The Velveteen Rabbit Margery Williams.
The father who went off to war was not the one who came home.
We must never forget these remarkable women and the daring, dangerous choices they made to save others and to protect and fight for their way of life.
Sometimes your heart got broken, but you just held on. That was all there was.
Leni got to her feet, stared at him. I didn’t mean to do that. The same words she’d heard spoken by her dad.
Will ya look at it?” Dad threw his arms wide, as if he wanted to embrace it all. He seemed to be growing before their eyes, like a tree, spreading branches wide, becoming strong. He liked the nothingness he saw, the vast emptiness. It was what he’d come for.
A kiss?” She repeated it to stall for time. This was the sort of thing that she’d taken for granted before the war. Men desired her; they always had. She wanted that back, wanted to flirt with Henri and be flirted with, and yet the very idea of it felt sad and a little lost, as if perhaps kisses didn’t mean much anymore and flirtation even less.
And there it is: the core of everything. We’re sisters. We know each other intimately. Our pasts, our secrets, our fears. It is a precious gift that we tried to throw away but can’t really let go of.
Love was the sun and the moon and the stars in a world that was otherwise cold and dark.
Hey, Daddy,” she whispered. It was a split second before she realized that she’d expected an answer. But, of course, there wasn’t one. His heart – the one that had loved her so well – had finally given up.
She looked at Vianne, and the universe of their friendship was in her eyes – the secrets they’d shared, the promises they’d made and kept, the dreams for their children that bound them as neatly as sisters.