Quotes from Charles Martin

Darkness does that. It speaks fears that, left alone, remain unspoken, yet real.

Do you do that with all your friends?" "What's that?" "Prepare them for the worst." She nodded. "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 reality.

It's the stuff we bury that hurts the most.

This is love with legs.' My father used to say that you can tell someone you love them until you're blue in the face, but until they see that walked out, they have no idea what it means. Hence, 'love with legs.'" A wide smile spread across her face. "Every day he'd climb out

I'm no expert, but I know one thing about anger—it's like alcohol. At some point, if you pour enough in there, it's coming back up. You may think you've built up a tolerance, but the truth is this—no man, not even Unc, can bury it so deep that it doesn't erupt at some point like Vesuvius and splatter your soul across the earth.

A change in paperwork [birth certificate] can't erase words stamped on the human heart.

Forgiveness offered -especially when so undeserved - cuts chains off the human heart that no other power in any universe anywhere can rattle much less break....love did what hatred can not and never will.

The problem with a wish list was what it told you about the person who wrote it. If it's honest, it's a rock-bottom, barebones, clear shot all the way to someone's soul. Hats can do the same thing.

Puzzles forced me to look at something from several angles before I moved on, to look again, and again, and possibly again because each piece—no matter how small or seemingly insignificant—was critical to the whole.

Somebody told me when I first got in this business that people believe what they read until somebody prints something that contradicts it. Then they believe both.

A song is a light we shine on others, not a light we shine on us.

Remember, there's an inverse relationship between your head and your heart. If your head swells, your heart shrinks. Tucker

My life had been characterized by emptiness the size of the Sahara but there, in that moment, in the back of that truck in the armpit of Nicaragua, I wondered—for the first time—if there wasn't a river flowing down deep inside me. If so, the water that would cleanse me was not water from my head—where I'd learned to rationalize my indifference. But water from my heart.

Don't let the fear of what might be rob you of the promise of what can.

O amor faz destas coisas. Nomeia o inominável e confere voz ao silêncio

A lot of dead writers feed my mind with their ever-present whisperings.

We're all broken, all walk with a limp. Here is the truth about you and me: even when in a far-off country, wasted life, stripped bare, smeared, squandered, nothing but scar tissue and shameful, self-inflicted wounds, the love of the Father finds the son and daughter.

I've been hurt, I imagine we all have, and I think somewhere in that pain we convince ourselves that if we don't open up and love again, we don't have to hurt again

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.

I sat in that room and realized that you can cut off a finger, cut off a hand, even cut off a leg, but if you take a woman's breast, you are cutting more than just a body part.

Stripped bare, the human soul has one real desire: to know and be known.

Water heals itself. Every time. I like that. And if I'm being honest, maybe I need that.

More than that, I liked being known, and for the first time in my life, I was known by another. I'm not saying I liked what she knew about me, not proud of the bits and pieces, but somehow she was standing inside my skin and yet I didn't experience shame at her reflection.

What I'm trying to say, and not doing a very good job at, is...will you ride the river with me?