Quotes from Sandra Kring

For all those who longed to find a best friend and found it in themselves

Bright Idea #91: When the weather's bad and your lights go out, have a pajama party. Eat till you feel sick, hula-hoop, paint your faces. Catch fireflies, and dance naked in the rain. If you do, then your bare butt will light up like a firefly after it's been let out of a jar.

It's not the length of time we knew someone that makes them so special. It's what they brought into our lives.

I've always said that we have to go on thinking anything's possible. Or else what's the point?

Sometimes we need to go home to find the parts of ourselves we left behind before we can truly become whole.

Be like the single blade of grass. For she too, has been trampled on, mowed down, and hit with such bitterly cold stretches that she had to shut down to survive. Yet still she stands upright with dignity, knowing that she endures, and still she dances with the wind.

I was standing in that place they call "bittersweet." That place that, if you could find it on a map, would be the mountain that sits between happy and sad. And I thought about how when you stand on that mountain, you can almost feel God's hand on your head and you just know, deep down inside, that even if you dno't understand everything that happened to cause those mixed feelings, you still know there was a good reason for them happening.

What does any of it matter in the end but who we loved and how we loved them.

Just as we don't move without first sorting through what we've gathered through the years, throwing away what is broken and can't be fixed, and what no longer fits, so too, should we do the same with what we've mentally gathered, before we move on. So let us do our sorting, throwing away regrets and old hurts, and taking for our journey only the treasures worth keeping: The lessons, the love, the best of what we've lived.

Bright Idea #89: If you ever don't know which direction to go in, or you start moving in the right direction but then get lost along the way, don't get rattled and start moving fast, this way and that. Instead, stand still and be quiet. Then you'll be showed which way to go.

I think, though, that another shame of war is that when it's over, a soldier don't get to leave it behind where he fought it. He's gotta carry it right back home with him, in his head, and in his heart.

If you ever don't know which direction to go in, or you start moving in the right direction but then get lost along the way, don't get rattled and start moving fast, this way and that. Instead, stand still and be quiet. Then you'll be showed which way to go.

And on bad days when you feel like you're stuck on a rock in the middle of nowhere, with no earth beneath you to sink your roots in, and no breeze to push your life forward, reach out to all those who ever gave you love, and believe with the faith of a child.

So there that poor little stick is, caught up in a swirlin' eddy, spinnin' and spinnin' until it's sure it's gonna be stuck in that one spot forever. But then a most amazing thing happens. For no reason that anyone can really be sure of, the water spits that little stick right out of that stuck place and off it goes, floatin' on down the river to find new adventures.

Right now you're swirlin' in a sad eddy, but you ain't gonna stay stuck in that place forever. Sooner of later, somethin's gonna happen to spit you out of it.

Unless they can look into the core of your heart, and see the degree of your passion, or look into the depths of your soul and see the extent of your will, then they have no business telling you what your can or cannot achieve. While they may know the odds, they do not know you. Nor do they know the power of your angels.

Lucky ain't a puppy no more and he don't bark for just any old reason. It takes a mailman, a squirrel, a car, a bird, a blowing leaf, or a tumbling scrap of paper to get him stirred up now.

You can't judge a person by what they're doing, till you know why they're doing it.

But when your life is broken, you'll let that misery roll by for years, and ignore the side of you that isn't finished.

A guy could starve to death when his brother don't come home.

There's nothing short of reincarnation that can change poor white trash into something respectable.

I wouldn't have made it back if it weren't for you, Earwig. I just kept telling myself, every day, every hour, that I had to live through it to come home for you.

Well, Earwig, there's not much about love that does make sense.

Living with regrets over what we did, or didn't do, is a heavy burden to carry,