Quotes from Lisa Unger

Love, a promise delivered already broken.

But mainly, people were so wrapped up in their own inner hurricane that they never saw anything outside the storm of themselves.

Totally different outcomes; we've made totally different choices in our lives. Like I said, how you were raised is part of the big picture. It's one important factor in a million. But in the end, it's not just the big and small events that make you who you are, make your life what it is, it's how you choose to react to them.

It's so hard for the strongest among us to stay sane, isn't it, under the conditions we have come to think of as normal?

Ralph Waldo Emerson thought of weeds as plants "whose virtues had not yet been discovered.

The girl with the pictures on her skin

Ah, gym class. Remember it? Institutionally sanctioned torture for society's misfits.

When they're small, they're part of you, on you in bed, showering with you, climbing onto your lap, holding on to your leg. Slowly, slowly, they start to move away, and if you love them, if you want them to feel safe and free to explore the world, you have to let them go. Mostly.

There was stardust in her bones.

Give up, she wanted to tell them. You lost. The world is crap, and no amount of communicating is going to change it.

Having love in your heart for someone is its own reward. Or punishment, depending on the circumstances.

He didn't seem like the sharpest tool in the shed.

Sometimes it seemed like that was all it was, motherhood—grief and guilt and fear. You said good-bye a little every day—from the minute they left your body until they left your home.

The human mind, with all its mystery, bears endless study. Doesn't it?

I have started taking the pills and I pray that everyone is right, that I have been sabotaged by my own brain chemicals. And that the little blue pill is going to put things right again.

It's not how we feel about someone that makes us love them, Annie, it's how they make us feel about ourselves.

And that's all life was—a series of choices and their consequences.

Let's love our girls well and protect their spirits, Introduce them to their own strength and power, and Keep them as bright and beautiful as the day they were born.

He didn't respect or even understand that other people had boundaries and only bullies pushed through them.

There is no external refuge." Meaning, you cannot look into the outer world to feel safe, to feel at peace. You cannot look without for understanding, or for justice. You must look within. I

She felt rather than saw Bruce frowning.

Don't make apologies for being yourself.

Didn't he know that she was playing him? The funny thing was that they almost never, ever did. And even after they figured it out, they doubted themselves. Wanted to believe they were wrong. Even when there was no denying that they'd been had, you could almost always go back for a second helping.

Hope is good. Without it, well, you do the math. But hope has to be like a prayer. Putting it out there to something more powerful than yourself. If the last few months have taught me anything, it's this: We don't have control, we have choices. The little ones, the big ones, these are the points on which our lives pitch and pivot. All we can do is make the best choices we can with what we know, and hope that things turn out the way we want.