Quotes from Charles Martin

There's something special about a kid's smile. I see in their faces what we all used to be before the world got hold of us.

Colorado..... When God carved this place with His words, He lingered.

When people become afraid on a soul level, when the terror of their lives has taken up residence in their belly, it becomes the wall behind which they sequester themselves. The only way through is to tunnel under. Meet them inside their perimeter. Problem is, the depth of their pain determines the thickness of the wall.

For all my life, I had stored my love in a a place down inside me that had no outlet. I contained it there. Kept it to myself. Afraid to let it out. Thought if I did, it'd seep out and I'd be left with none. I didn't have much to start with.

You were right about writers." Her voice was a whisper. "How's that?" "They die. Their words don't.

I used to think the same thing. Thought that by keeping it to myself, I was protecting you. Truth is—" He shook his head and spat again. "The truth is the only thing that doesn't hurt.

Stories order the pieces. They begin as seismic shifts, then they surface, becoming ripples that lap upon foreign shores. They are the echoes that resonate in this world and the next.

If this is how all our hopes and love and good intentions end, then why not put a bullet through each one of us and call it a day? Why put us here, give us each other, and fill us with dreams and gifts and expressions, only to spill them across the street like cheap paint!

The truth is a giant hand. It both cuts us free and holds us tight.

a glimmer of hope return from somewhere deep, rising like a phoenix out of the ashes of defeat and impossibility. In a whisper I was accustomed to, she said "Thank you" and

sometimes it's hard to see what could be, what we hope for, through the hurting part of what is, 'cause sometimes stuff hurts so much that we can't see nothing. But then sometimes what we hope for, well, seems like if we hope it long enough, hard enough, deep enough, it becomes what it.

By your words you'll be acquitted, and by your words you'll be condemned.

I'd never cried as an adult, but then she passed that child—moments old—into my arms and, from some place I'd never felt, never known, never sensed, a well broke loose, burst forth, and poured out of me. I couldn't stop them. Didn't want to.

Mutt, a mentally ill brother who is setting fire to a load of expensive things from the house he grew up in and was physically abused and neglected in) "Tuck (mutt's brother is being asked), aren't you going to stop him?" 'Why?' 'Well' - she waved her hand across the house - 'couldn't you two do something good with all this?"...... "Yeah, but the money we earned wouldn't buy as much therapy as that fire....

I quit screaming at God a long time ago, 'cause I reckon he knows a thing or two about hurt.

I guess sometimes it's got to hurt before it can get better." I nodded. "Hearts are like that.

We don't love because people love us back. We love because we can. Because we were made to.

table. Fill our conversations, our time, and our hearts. For"—Charlie pointed his voice in my direction—"they are the wellspring of life.

Sometimes good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment." "Doesn't seem right.

I've been asking the Lord to forgive me for the things in my past that brought this upon all of you. I have asked before, and I will ask again, please forgive me.

Indifference is the curse of this age. We need to hear that. Indifference is evil, and it could not be further from the heart of God. Don't think so? Let me point you to the Cross. Hanging there, Jesus was anything but indifferent. Don't think I've somehow got a handle

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying.

There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.

Hope is not the result of medicine or anything that science has to offer. It is a flower that sprouts and grows when others pour water upon it. I think sometimes that I spent so much time worrying about how to protect and strengthen the flower—even going so far as to graft in a new stem and root system—that I forgot to simply water it.