Rachel > Rachel's Quotes

“Dudes in suits and politicians didn't make sense to my 18-year-old brain. All I wanted to do was be awesome.”
― Ronen Kauffman, NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, GOODBYE Bands, Dirty Basements, and the Search for Self

“I stood there, my head bowed, my shoulders hunched. This is how it feels to be dragged from the cement shoes of a comfortable rut. The slow, steady strain on my legs became an excruciating amputation. My ankles pulled free from my feet. Bones snapped, cartilage tore, veins pulsed blood onto the soft brown clay of the yard. ”
― Deborah Smith, The Crossroads Cafe

“The best sex takes us somewhere. Somewhere warm and expansive, a paradise of lust and happiness. Sex is and can be and should be but only very rarely is an act of communion with something bigger than ourselves. Men fuck and women make love, people say, but we men make love when we fuck a woman we adore: it’s the same thing to us. We mean it sincerely. I had places inside me only Cathy could fill with her body, and I made her happy with my body more than I ever thought I could.”
― Deborah Smith, The Crossroads Cafe

“There’s something very freeing about losing the anchors that have always defined you. Frightening, sad, but exhilarating in a poignant way, as well. You’re free to float to the moon and evaporate or sink to the bottom of the deepest ocean. But you’re free to explore. Some people confuse that with drifting, I suppose. I like to think of it as growing.”
― Deborah Smith, The Crossroads Cafe

“Happy people look young. You’re really afraid of getting older, aren’t you? You should only be afraid of getting less happy.”
― Deborah Smith, The Crossroads Cafe

“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“...maybe it was better to break a man's leg than to break his heart.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Seabiscuit: An American Legend

“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“Here’s to books, the cheapest vacation you can buy.”
― Charlaine Harris

“Children lose their innocence piece by piece. The layers are carved away until our hearts have been exposed and polished into an unnatural gloss. We spend the rest of our lives trying to remember why we ever loved so passionately and how we dreamed so simply, before life chiseled us down to the core.”
― Deborah Smith

“We are all bodies of water, guarding the mystery of our depths, but some of us have more to guard than others.”
― Deborah Smith, Alice at Heart

“I know I don't need him, but I think I want him.”
― Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

“That's the nature of being a parent, Sabine has discovered. You'll love your children far more than you ever loved your parents, and -- in the recognition that your own children cannot fathom the depth of your love -- you come to understand the tragic, unrequited love of your own parents.”
― Ursula Hegi

“The absence of doubt will turn humans into beasts.”
― Ursula Hegi, Children and Fire

“Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

“Everything you're sure is right can be wrong in another place.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.”
― Barbara Kingsolver

“The changes we dread most may contain our salvation.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder

“When we traded homemaking for careers, we were implicitly promised economic independence and worldly influence. But a devil of a bargain it has turned out to be in terms of daily life. We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing routines, the creative task of molding our families' tastes and zest for life; we received in exchange the minivan and the Lunchable.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

“Emelina and I took each other in. All morning I'd felt the strange disjuncture that comes from reconnecting with your past. There's such a gulf between yourself and who you were then, but people speak to that other person and it answers; it's like having a stranger as a house guest in your skin.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

“The truth needs so little rehearsal.”
― Barbara Kingsolver

“Thanks for this day, for all birds safe in their nests, for whatever this is, for life.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer

“A miscarriage is a natural and common event. All told, probably more women have lost a child from this world than haven't. Most don't mention it, and they go on from day to day as if it hadn't happened, so people imagine a woman in this situation never really knew or loved what she had.

But ask her sometime: how old would your child be now? And she'll know.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

“Love weighs nothing.”
― Barbara Kingsolver

“It's the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.”
― Barbara Kingsolver

“After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson

“The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson