Quotes from Charles Martin

Words that soak into your ears are whispered, not yelled.

Most people enter a library and don't hear a thing. Eerie silence. I stand between the shelves and hear ten thousand conversations occurring all at once. Each ushering an invitation. The noise is raucous.

I had to let her go. She's not coming back. The distance is too great. The mountain between us is the one mountain I cannot climb.

Emma once told me that some people spend their whole lives trying to outrun God, maybe get someplace He's never been. She shook her head and smiled, wondering why. Trouble is, she said, they spend a lifetime searching and running, and when they arrive, they find He's already been there.

What do you want in a woman, in life?' I thought a moment...'The Rangers...we began to describe one another in a few simple words: El es muy bueno para cabalgar el rio. Meaning, 'He'll do to ride the river with.' In Texan, it means, 'I'd trust him with my life.' I scratched my head. 'I want someone to ride the river with.

Identity does not grow out of action until it has taken root in belonging.

And they ate supper before they said grace...Oh, um...she moved into his house, stayed awhile, and then they got married.

Child, the Lord gives you what you need, when you need it.

They say God made man, but Sam Colt made them equal.

Maybe piecing is continual. Maybe the glue takes time to dry. Maybe bones take time to mend. Maybe it's okay that the mess I call me is in process. Maybe it's a long, hard walk out of the crash site. Maybe the distance is different for each of us. Maybe love is bigger than my mess.

Since that moment, I'd bought into the idea that isolation would ease my pain and indifference was the remedy for rejection. Clarity was quick in coming. Isolation is a prison and indifference is a lie. Neither work.

You put a new heart in Emma a long time ago, it just wasn't the kind you were thinking of." He laughed to himself. "Hope is an amazing thing. I saw it in Emma, saw it with my own eyes.

If the worst is a possibility, then you keep it on the table. Don't hide from it. Don't run. It can happen. And if and when it does, you need to have thought about it ahead of time. That way you're not crushed when your worst thought becomes your reality.

From out of your heart, you speak." -Emma, When Crickets Cry

It's complicated." "Yeah? Welcome to Earth. Everything here is complicated.

This side of the grave, no one--and I don't care who they are or what sin or sins they have or are committing--is too far gone.

Maybe broken is what happens before you become unbroken.

Love fills the empty places and flows from what was once the epicenter of the wound. And it's the flowing that washes out the residue of the pain and makes us whole again. That's the crazy miracle that is love. The more you pour out, the more you have to pour.

While her emotions were very real and they gnawed at her with a raw sincerity, she was listening to something deeper. She was listening to her will, not letting what she felt dictate what she would do. Didn't let it dictate her life.

We all lose our way. Sometimes it just takes somebody else to find us and bring us back. Remind us.

The stone had been rolled away... That fact alone demands a response.

Indifference is the curse of this age. Indifference is evil, and it couldn't be farther from the heart of God. Afterword - On Digging a Well p. 359

I had to let her go. She's not coming back. The distance is too great. The mountain between us is the one mountain I cannot climb. I thought you should know.

Waiting for somebody does that. It turns minutes to hours, hours to days, and days to several lifetimes.