Quotes from Barbara Davis

Maybe it wasn't about needing them. People hold on to all kinds of things, silly things, even broken things, because of the memories attached to them.

don't live a smaller life than you deserve.

There was certainly plenty in her own past that she was reluctant to look at. Because looking made it real.

then, she knew better than most that the face a person chose to show the world wasn't always the real one. Everyone had a story. Not everyone wanted to share.

And so I sit on the dunes in my carefully mismatched clothes, hour after hour, day after day, frozen in my looking back. 'Do not look behind you...lest you be swept away.' That is what scripture say. Only there is nowhere for me to look but back. No future. No redemption. Like Lot's wife, I am turned to salt, my tired eyes trained on the blue-gray horizon, where sea meets sky, where my yesterday's met my tomorrows, a ragtag eccentric, watching and waiting for something that never comes.

Easier isn't always best.

People like to dig up the bodies, anguish over mistakes. What's the point? The water's poisoned. There's no cleaning it up after it's done. The only thing you can do is walk away—and set fire to your bridges.

And I don't think you're helpless. But it's okay to let someone help you once in a while.

I've never been good at letting people in, but somehow you're here, and I'm glad.

I'm not cut out for happy. Busy is going to have to do.

I've been having nightmares," she said quietly. "Basically the same dream for months now. I'm exhausted.

Her eyes were open and glazed, a piercing shade of violet with fixed, bottomless pupils.

Integrity isn't something you have in some parts of your life and not in others. You either have it, or you don't.

She said the word never represents all the doors we keep closed, that when we say never we close ourselves off from the hope that things can ever be different.

At ten, she learned that no address was permanent, at twelve, that no promise was sacred, and at sixteen, that there was no such thing as safe.

I think I could sit here all night looking out over this lake. It's so peaceful, like a church without walls.

You're sure about this?" "No. But I'm doing it anyway. I have to.

She wanted to go back, to clean it all up, to rewrite her story without all the dark parts, to unknow the things she knew, to unsee the things she'd seen, to live without her memories, her shame, her regret. And maybe that was a kind of atonement, after all. But none of those things were possible.

But if she was being honest—and it was well past time for that—she had to acknowledge that the empty places in her life were of her own making.

It just gets old, you know? Always defending your choices. No one ever imagines your reasons might be well thought out, that it might actually be the least selfish choice you'll ever make. Not all of us believe our lives are meaningless unless we reproduce.

Dreams are like public service announcements from your soul. The only way to get past them is to pay attention to what they're telling us.

We're all a collection of our stories, chérie. Our joys and sorrows. Our loves and losses. That is who we are, a tally of all our agonies and ecstasies.

Lynn gave him a half-hearted shrug.

the instant her foot touched the driveway, like