Quotes from Susan Wiggs

the one who was lost. It was as if someone had pulled a dark hood over her face, spun her around until she was dizzy, then thrust her forward, to grope her way blindly through life, praying she would find something to hold on to.

apartment? There was so much she didn't know, so much she wanted to learn but wouldn't let herself

I feel like I should clean the house, so I a going to read until the feeling passes.

She had to teach herself not to feel. Refusing to feel hurt also meant she numbed herself to joy, but the sacrifice was worth it.

Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star.

We die when we refuse to stand up for justice.

A book, too, can be a star . . . a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.

The list of side effects was lengthy and horrible. Sonnet had pored over it, along with all the other literature she'd hastily devoured, searching for grains of hope. The worst part of chemo started after the drugs were administered.

She kept sneaking looks at him. He had strong, chiseled features, his jaw softened by a day or two's growth of beard. And those shoulders. She'd always been a sucker for a guy's strong shoulders. Big square hands that looked as if they did harder work than writing biographies. No wedding band. At thirty, Isabel couldn't help noticing a detail like that.

Listen, you're not a criminal. Or a victim. You're a survivor. Love yourself, honey. Love that girl who lost her mama too young and picked the wrong guy and had to fight for herself. Love that girl---because I do.

Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything. ?Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

Step softly—a dream lies buried here.

She inhaled air so damp it seemed to drench her lungs.

I drew the things of nature, leaves and berries, shore grasses and nuts and long fronds of fern. I drew a curlew perched at the end of a pier, and a cormorant with wings outstretched to catch the breeze. Drawing is a way to make sense of the world in my heart and mind. I speak through my drawing and sometimes I discover my own feelings that were hidden from me.

Yes, she was a mess, but she wasn't fragile. She would not be broken. So many times in her life, she'd felt powerless, but once she grabbed hold of her power, she realized it had been there all along, waiting for her to find it. And Jerome seemed to know that. He was her safe harbor. He defined, at long last, who she belonged to, who was there for her, who saw her and cherished her.

To Sonnet, wearing castoff clothing was just another way to make her different from the other kids at school. As if she needed one more thing to make her different.

If you never did, you should. These things are fun, and fun is good. The statement was attributed to Theodore Seuss Geisel—better known as Dr. Seuss.

The penthouse bar had an even more commanding view, and craft cocktails named after local or formerly local writers and their books--- the Anne Rice blood orange martini, the Tsukiyama Samurai, the Christopher Moore Demon, the Joy Luck Cocktail.

I can see the Lady has a genius for ruling, whilst I have a genius for not being ruled. Jane Welsh Carlyle, (1845)

I came to understand that there is no such thing as a perfect life, just a constant shifting, like the wind on the lake. You adjust your sails to catch the wind, not the other way around.

You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place. —Miriam Adeney

When something is hard, but you do it anyway and get stronger because you did it, that's building character.

Instead of this dumb rain check idea, I'll write a song about a guy who likes a girl who works in a bookstore but he won't tell her. And the clichés keep coming, he grumbled. Quit being one, then, she said.

remembered that feeling as if she'd tucked it into her backpack and carried it around with her everywhere she went. This was both a blessing and a burden. A blessing, because this love had shown her, ever so briefly, that heaven could be touched. A burden, because it was a reminder of something she had lost.