Quotes from Susan Meissner

I believe I have you to thank for reminding me that pictures on an urn, though lovely, are not real. Life is real, in all its complexity. And though it can be painfully difficult, it can also be unspeakably wonderful.

I want to be walking down this street with Mama, headed where we're headed. But her hand in mine makes me feel like I'm not alone in this world where you can't always see what's in front of you.

found out how fast things can change. You think you have a view of what's waiting for you just up the road, but then something happens, and you find out pretty quick you were looking at the wrong road.

This is what makes us sublimely human, isn't it? Not unsullied genetic perfection, but when we stubbornly love and honor one another.

my life seemed more fully layered because of the choices I had made, both consciously and in ignorance. I

How we treat one another is what we are still able to do something about.

Remembering what you want about the past, even if it's not entirely true, keeps you from giving up on the present.

But you can't get back the day you make a decision that changes everything.

The past hadn't been erased just because a new future had been handed it.

We're not like God, [Papa] says. We can't know. We can't live like we do know or should have known.

Fire is always hungry for things that don't belong to it.

It's as if the body is a candle and the soul is its flame. When the flame is snuffed out, all that is left to prove that there had been a flame is the candle, and even that we only have for a little while. Even the candle is not ours to keep. And yet how we care for that candle for that stretch of time that it is still ours! How we want to remember the shape and fragrance of the little flame it held.

want her to see that I understand there are no secrets to a charmed life. There is just the simple truth that you must forgive yourself for only being able to make your own choices, and no one else's.

We moved wordlessly from one room to another, from the room of the dead to the room where time lay in pages everywhere I looked.

Music is the language of the soul. Music captures our prayers and hopes and joys—and yes, our sorrows—and gives them voice, just as the paintings and the statues give them dimension.

Deviance is woven into the fabric of a person's genes, as is intelligence and moral fortitude. I would ask you how

Maybe being brave is different from being unafraid. If you're not afraid, what is there to be brave about?

People who say everything happens for a reason usually say that only when they agree with the reason. Those people are not the once who wish they could fold back time and make different choice. They don't lie awake at night and whisper , If only.....

But it also seemed that every time I shared Edward's story with someone, his hold on me diminished a little. And I didn't want him to disappear from me; I had so little of him to hold on to.

I sat there thinking that if God could split an entire sea in half so a million Hebrews could walk across dry land, couldn't he stop a little germ?

and that if she ever needs to talk to her or touch her, she need only go to Belinda's peach tree and put her arms around it, and Candace will whisper to her through the branches that all is well.

The words fell out of my mouth like slivers of shattered glass.

Control is an illusion. No one has it. I don't even have it. You can't wish for control; you can only learn to play your part in a world where nothing is truly certain. And you do have a part to play.

what you can still dream about is often sweeter than the reality.