Quotes from Susan Wiggs

her questions shooting at him like a barrage of machine-gun fire. He thought he did okay, because he was prepared. He had spent weeks reading and researching and studying, all the while waiting for the next round of bad news about his father.

You know what Winston Churchill famously said? 'When you're going through hell, keep going.

The human heart has a way of holding on for as long as it takes, until it has been fulfilled.

They each took a plate and helped themselves to a feast that looked as if it had been prepared for a magazine layout. There was a salad sprinkled with fresh flowers- Isabel said they were baby pansies, nasturtium and angelica. The spread included plates of artisan cheeses and raw and grilled vegetables, big chafing dishes of fragrant casseroles, berries and apples with a variety of sauces, an array of local wines and water from Calistoga. The abundance was almost overwhelming to Tess.

No amount of liquor could make him forget the things he yearned to erase from his mind—

Though familiar with the term white privilege, she foolishly hadn't believed it applied to her. Privileged was the last word she would use to describe herself. She had grown up poor, with a teen mom, and she'd been a school dropout. Jerome had been raised in a loving family that gave him a firm foundation, an education, a solid career. Yet despite all the advantages, he and his boys struggled with matters she could barely imagine.

She had always been good at dreaming, but what she had never done before was believe a dream could actually come true.

one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer—and the other seven will know her.

Returning to the buffet, she helped herself to another piece of focaccia bread, the top glistening with a sheen of olive oil and sprinkled with big crystals of salt, fronds of rosemary and tiny curls of thinly sliced garlic. She tasted the bread and made a sound of pleasure that would have embarrassed her if anyone had heard. It's even better with this Cabernet. Dominic Rossi stood there with two full glasses of red wine. Tess felt her face heat with a blush. Okay, so he'd heard.

maybe crying helped, he reflected, counting the squares of the grid that imprisoned him. Not crying was actually painful, an ache of pressure in his chest. Maybe girls cried because it let off the pressure.

One time, they went to the city to stand on the bat bridge at dusk, watching in horrified wonder as thousands of bats swooped into the orange sky. Her mother used to set aside one entire Sunday every April to take a drive into the countryside to look at the bluebonnets. They both found the glorious fields of deep indigo flowers mesmerizing.

Not for any birth mother I've ever met. You don't ever walk away. You don't ever forget. This is one of the biggest things that will ever happen to you. One of the biggest things in your life. It will always be part of you. That's one reason counseling and self-care are part of the process.

My dear, you are unhappy to the last inch of your shadow. I fear this state is so familiar to you that you no longer recognize it as unhappiness.

he'd formed the idea that she was a solitary sort, not one to seek company when a good book lay at hand.

No creature should ever be trapped against its will," she used to say. "It will ruin itself, just trying to escape.

She was in the middle of reading The Book Thief about a girl in Nazi Germany surviving something horrific.

This is a toga I wear when I teach them Roman numerals.

They'd had nothing—a rented spot in a trailer park and a car that was older than Mama herself. And yet Margie had never felt deprived. There was a richness to their lives that had nothing to do with the bank account. Their world was built on a foundation of love and trust between the two of them.

It was a wonder, after so many years of trying to press herself into society's mold, to suddenly suspect that the problem was with the mold, not with her.

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit." —Helen Keller

watched as the earth mother turned into a corporate dominatrix, chewing out the legal counsel

She visited her father all the time. She'd stepped over piles of clutter, but it had never occurred to her that Pop was having serious problems. As time went by, his carelessness had increased, but Rosa hadn't thought anything of it.

I remember she told me she could either spend her time working on a scrapbook about her life, or actually living her life. And she chose to live her life.

Adoption is the start of a bittersweet and difficult emotional journey. It's also the most rewarding and selfless thing I've ever done.