Quotes from Charles Martin

It's so dry the trees are bribing the dogs.

When you laugh...I want to smile. And when you cry...' She brushed the tears off of my face. 'I want the tears to roll down my cheeks.' She shook her head once, whispering, 'I'm not leaving you...won't.

Tucker, I want to tell you a secret." She curled my hand into a fist and showed it to me. "Life is a battle, but you can't fight it with your fists." She gently tapped me on the chin with my fist and then put her hand on my chest, " You got to figt it with your heart.

Sometimes good judgement comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgement.

She cried easily. Evidence that she felt much, and most often for other people. A rare and beauty filled gift.

Child," she said placing her head to mine and her callused fingers on my cheek, "you can whip it and beat it senseless, you can drag it through the streets and spin on it, you can even dangle it from a tree, drive spikes trough it, and drain the last breath from it, but in the end, no matter what you do, and no matter how hard you try to kill it, love wins.

We're all fallen people in a fallen world.

Ashley tried to speak. Tried again and still could not find the words. Finally she wiped her eyes, pressed her ear to my chest, and whispered. 'Give me all the pieces.

As strange as it sounds, broken people are fixed by other broken people. It's God's economy.

She smiled, tilted her head, and . . . have you ever seen video of melting glaciers where huge chunks, the size of skyscrapers, break off and crash into the sea? If hearts could do that, then when her hair slid from behind her ear and down her eyes, and the right side of her lip turned up, I heard my heart crack down the middle.

The only monster you need to worry about in this life is the one that stares at you from the mirror each morning. You tame him, make friends with him, and the rest of life is nothing you can't handle.

Love is a choice. It's a decision.' She told us, 'It flows into, through, and out of each person like a river. If you try to stop it, it'll sneak around until It finds another heart and breaks through.

When I find myself wondering what hell must be like, I'm reminded of the terminals in Atlanta. Thousands of people, most of whom don't know one another, crammed into a limited space, all in a hurry and trying desperately to get out.

Time to paint your but white and run with antelope-in English- Stop arguing and do as your told.

You rescued me when I thought nobody would. When I thought I wasn't worth the effort. You gave me everything and asked for nothing.' She pressed her face to mine. 'If this is love on the other side of the rescue, then I want to live it. With you. But,' She shook her head. 'But if you give you to me, then'- she placed her palm flat across my chest -'come heavy

All hearts have but one request. One simple, unspoken, undeniable need. One undeniable fear. "To be known.

Gonna be a real frog-strangling turd-floater.

There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.

Never make it without the compass. In the trees, I'd lose all sense of perspective. Direction. Maybe life is like that.

No matter where you go, no matter what happens, what you become, what you gain, what you lose, no matter whether you succeed or fail, stand or fall, no matter what you dip your hands into . . . no gone is too far gone. Son, you can always come home.

The books talked about it [the heart] as if it were a sump pump stuck down in the muck and mire of somebody's backyard. Never in all my scientific reading did I encounter anything that talked about a broken heart. Never did I read anything about what the heart felt, how it felt or why it felt. Feeling and knowing weren't important, only understanding

If my life were still a movie, this is the part that would end up on the cutting room floor. We were all just fill-ins for a long-running soap opera. The actors changed, but the story seldom did. Certainly not the action.

It's amazing what we value when we're at our lowest.

I have come to kno one thing without ay shadow of doubt: if anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart