Quotes from Lisa Unger

Grief and trauma, I remind myself, are not linear experiences. There are good days and bad ones, hard dips into despair, moments of light and hope.

But the foliage of mundane life just grew over the past a bit every day if you let it. And maybe that was the most extraordinary event of all.

She heeded Bluebeard's warning, thought Pandora was a fool. There are some memories better abandoned. Common wisdom demanded examination of the past, probing of childhood pain and trauma. Then—acceptance, release, and ultimately forgiveness.

Once a woman has a husband and child, her time, her heart, her desires never quite belong to her again. A blessing some days, a burden others, like all the other gifts that life brings.

I agree. I have a therapist now, one with whom I'm actually honest, and we've been over the events of my life again and again—rehashing without judgment the things I've done, the things that have been done to me, and how I ultimately saved myself.

What is it that they say? That thing about happy and unhappy families? That happiness is all the same, but misery is unique?

I mean, there's not much to it. You're born, you're loved, you die. Where's the excitement, the drama? Where are the blow-out fights, the tentative makeups? The estrangements? The seething bitterness? The dysfunction?

I'll keep it to remember that love is what we do, not what we say. That not everyone has the strength or the ability to love another, or even himself. And that some of us have a secret heart that cannot be shared.

What did the kids call it these days? Sweaty tryhard? When you bent over backward to get someone to like you?

What's interesting is the families that pretend to be happy, that have a carefully constructed facade, just barely propped up by secrets and lies. One breath and it all falls down. I can't wait to see yours crumble.

As far as Eloise was concerned, there were only two ways of being in the world. You either walked through life acting out of love, or you acted out of fear.

People like this guy—they count on you shrinking into the shadows, letting your shame keep you silent. That's how they get away with it again and again.

Anger is not the absence of love. Anger broke you apart. Love and anger wrap around each other and becomes one living thing inside your heart.

Mako, and even Hannah on a bad night, might engage with Sophia, leading to an all-out battle. Which was exactly what Mom wanted; it was sadly the only way she knew how to be intimate. It had taken a couple of years of therapy for Hannah to come to that particular realization.

The world was not a fair place and nothing—not looks, not wealth, not love—was evenly distributed. He knew that, of course he did. Why did it never stop hurting?

The past is gone. The future is a fantasy. There is only the breath, the moment.

There was and always had been a drive within me to know the truth of things.

After all, beneath the surface of it, isn't that what we're all looking for? We may say we're looking for love, following dreams, chasing the dollar, but aren't we just looking for a place where we belong? A place where our thoughts, feelings, and fears are understood?

My mother always told me that if you're embarrassed by a kindness and don't know what to say, keep it simple. "Thank you.

Hateful feelings could crop up in a marriage, like weeds pushing their way through concrete. If you weren't vigilant, they took over quickly, like kudzu, depriving love of light and air until it withered and died. It was a slow, silent death, impossible to imagine in the heat of new love.

For my parents, Joe and Virginia Miscione We never understand what it means to be a parent until we are parents ourselves. I love you, Mom and Dad. Thanks for everything … then and now.

Finley felt a fresh wash of tears, a desire to run toward Eloise, to cling and to hold on. But she didn't. She had already learned the most important lesson Eloise had to teach, though it still hurt like hell: Fear holds on. Love lets go. "Yes

They just want to be heard. They just want us to listen to their stories. Are

What did it really mean to love someone? Did it have to last forever to have existed at all?