Quotes from Ann Howard Creel

Memories are fragile things to hold, but many times, it's what we have.

I've often wondered, even to this day, why during painful times some people seem to step away from themselves and make decisions that fall far out of their usual line of character and behaviour. Perhaps a natural reluctance to sit still is central, or perhaps, like the lesser animals, instinct forces us to go on even if grief has left us not up to the task…. In one fleeting moment, I stripped away the petals of my future, let them catch wind, and fly away

He touched me as if I were the curved and delicate handle of a china cup, but he held me tightly just as I was, flesh and blood and full of human flaws and fears. In his arms I wasn't a girl dreaming of sailing the high seas, and I wasn't a farm kid jumping the train, either, but a fully grown woman riding the soft side of a crescent moon.

Sometimes you do find what you're looking for closer than you think

As a child, when I first heard the story of Creation, I'd closed my eyes and pictured the earth as a ball rolling off the palm of God and into dark space, then drifting around until it found its home in sunny orbit. Never perfect, but ever spinning, and holding on to her course, despite it all.

Words of kindness had always been more difficult for me to handle than harsh reprimands. Ever since I had been quite young, I could resist those who went against me, had been able to deny their opinions. My inner strength came from an ability to handle, then separate myself from, adversity. Compassion, however, brought up more raw emotion than judgments could ever stir.

All over the world, people are looking at the same stars, the same moon, the same sun, every day. Somehow, I didn't feel so isolated when I thought of it that way.

makes us no promises, no guarantees. Things move toward us whether we want them or not. Accidents occur, illnesses strike, and bombs fall. One street can be pulverized, the next one over not even scratched. Chance is so shifty and arbitrary.

Silver liked people to a point; he liked to hear them tell of some important news or share a laugh, but then solitude was always calling him back. Too much contact with people took things away from him—his energy, his soul, his freedom.

Why must you say such eccentric things?" "Maybe I'm eccentric." "It's not something most people aspire to." "I'm not most people.

Rose spoke up softly beside me. 'It's how you handle the unfairness of life -that's what matters, I think.'...In this city of imprisonment, I had seen faith and optimism, strength and fortitude in the face of adversity.

she had wanted love. She had thought love would save her. She had hoped she would be worthy. She had dreamed of redemption. And for a time she believed she had found it all.

You hungry?" asked Silver, who was thus nicknamed because his hair had turned old when he was but twenty-five.

Loving him was perhaps like peering into the rain—a sort of sightlessness, akin to stumbling about in a storm, grabbing the things you want to find, and letting the others wash away.

The sea was a landscape of longing, she thought, a landscape of ceaseless change.

Could such happiness come out of the unexpected? Or was unexpected happiness the best happiness of all?

She also knew that the story you made up in your mind was rarely the real story.

Did love always come joined with a certain amount of trepidation? Along with the good feelings, was there always dread that something wouldn't go right or that love could be lost? Love and fear seemed twined like stalks of a grapevine—so close they couldn't be separated.

Ray to Livvy] Aren't you used to people meaning what they say?

When I'd headed out here on my wedding day, I hadn't realized I'd bought a ticket to my own history, a different one from studying Akh-en-aten and Horizon-of-the-Aten, maybe, but a living, ongoing one.

A meaningless life. More than anything, she had wanted to be useful. She had wanted to better herself and those around her. She had wanted to live as one with the sea in her soul. And she had wanted love. She had thought love would save her. She had hoped she would be worthy. She had dreamed of redemption. And for a time she believed she had found it all.

I don't envy him. I think he's made too much money. The more material things you have, the more you have to lose.

At that moment, I wished with everything in my body that things could be different. I wished I could pluck out the threads of him that I didn't care for and keep the ones I liked. But then again, I knew that people couldn't be pulled apart in that way. Those severed threads would just cause the whole of him to unravel.

If my father hadn't come to America about 35 years ago, I'd be starving in Poland . . . I'd be sobbing in France . . . I'd be stealing in Greece . . . I'd be shivering in Belgrade . . . I'd be slaving in Frankfurt . . . I'd be hiding in Prague . . . I'd be buried in Russia. But here he was, alive and walking on his own two feet.