Quotes from Laura McBride

What are the words to say to someone who gave you back your life, who believed that you still had a soul, who acknowledged how bad it was to feel? Shouldn't there be another language for this? Different words altogether?

it feels like I've been thrown down a chute. I'm careening forward, trying not to get too banged up, utterly out of control of my descent, and somewhere in the dark, there's a hole waiting for me to fall through it.

We say 'Thank you very much' and 'I so appreciate what you have done' to people who fill our grocery bags, to people who offer us a ride across town. What are the words to say to someone who gave you back your life, who believed that you still had a soul, who acknowledged how bad it was possible to feel? Shouldn't there be another language for this? Different words altogether? And if I use the same old words, did I change what I was trying to say? Did I make it a same old thing?

But failing isn't proof that nothing matters or that we were fools to care. We fail even though things matter very much; it's the possibility of failure that makes them matter even more.

That's one thing I learned from Ray Senior. You don't owe an explanation to anybody but the Lord, and most people will stop asking if you act like you won't be telling.

Every step forward counts, every step forward makes the next one easier.

Mrs. Monaghan says we don't always have to say what we like and what we don't like. We should just practice dealing with it.

The sky is a living thing when one is a desert dweller, stretched out, vast and imposing, with its constant dance of cloud and color, the visual equivalent of a movie soundtrack to one's life.

in the length of time measured by infinity, and in the size of a world measured by countless universes, is it possible to believe that our lives are anything more than a few blades of grass?

Sometimes it's not that you don't want help. It's that you can't bear to be offered help that just keeps turning out not to be enough after all.

then is that not life in its simplest form? That so little matters so much, and so much matters so little.

I shiver with anger and hold on to the beautiful strength of this clean emotion

People didn't get what they deserved, you couldn't hold off bad luck by being good, you couldn't say you earned your good luck. You just got what you got, and did the best you could, and tried not to be afraid of what might happen next.

once she had believed the world could become new again, that the right people in the right place could make up any rules they wanted. And none of this was true. They had all paid the price. And really, where was the moment that should have happened differently? Which was the choice that had set all the others in motion? And would a different choice have been the right one?

Life perfects us, if we let it.

I'd rather live knowing I made a mistake than wondering if I could have made a difference if I'd tried.

Maybe the point is just to get through one hour, and then another, and not think farther ahead than that.

The way I see it, nothing in life is a rehearsal. It's not preparation for anything else. There's no getting ready for it. There's no waiting for the real part to begin. Not ever.

We say 'Thank you very much' and 'I so appreciate what you have done' to people who fill our grocery bags, to people who offere us a ride across town. What are the words to say to someone who gave you back your life, who believed that you still had a soul, who acknowledged how bad it was possible to feel? Shouldn't there be another language for this? Different words altogether? And if I use the same old words, did I change what I was trying to say? Did I make it a same old thing?