Quotes from Catherine Ryan Hyde

Because when you really love someone, you want them to be happy. Even if it can't be with you.

The people with the least to give always give the most. Haven't you noticed that?

I'd say, yes, the horse has a way of communicating pain without words. I can't always put my finger on how.

You have a decent brain, you just keep it in mothballs all the time." "You

t's like people who want to feel only happy but not sad," she said. "It never works. You either feel things or you don't. You don't get to pick and choose..

Thank you for letting me know I have a knower. Not that you ever told me I did, exactly. But when you told me you did, that there were things you knew with your knower, I checked inside myself. Imagine my surprise.

No, the really tough bit is when you find yourself dropped on the other side, and you have to find a way for your life to go forward from there.

This was the other thing Grace had noticed about grown-ups. In addition to being afraid of each other, it was hard to wring any information out of them. At least, if it was information about them. If it was about what kids ought to do, then they were nothing but words.

My mother had this thing she used to say. Before she died. "Nearly everything is easier to get into than it is to get out of.

I think people are slow to believe in any kind of change." "That's 'cause nobody ever changes," she said. "Do you really believe that? Not ever?" "Well. Hardly ever. I guess you could be the exception to the rule." She still sounded as though she planned to wait and see, but it was marvelous progress all the same. It made my whole day.

The world is terrible and wonderful at the same time. One doesn't negate the other, but the wonderful keeps us in the game. It keeps us moving forward.

But you have a way of pushing decisions down the road. It's like you're waiting to be sure how it'll pan out before you decide. But that never works. We can't ever know that going in. I think you just need to choose a path and see where it takes you.

Her brain was not speaking to her. Or maybe it was the other way around. But she could feel the disconnect—a no-man's-land of blankness, like a moat hastily dug to foil an advancing enemy. And

Thirty-six years. I'm not saying I know it all. In one way, we've all just got the time since we got up this morning. But I've seen a lot of people walk a lot of roads. Some not so happy. And it makes them what they are. So if you run around putting a pillow under people to cushion their fall . . . well, I'm just not sure it's quite the favor we think it is.

I could try." "For your own sake. Yeah." "It's just . . . I've been like this for so long." August pulled in a deep breath. Sighed it out again. "Yeah, I imagine you have. But I'd still appreciate it if you'd let go of the idea that you constantly need to impress me." "I'll try." But he didn't sound too sure about his chances of succeeding. "Toast?

There's a reason people will always let you down. It's because they came to this weird planet to live their own lives. Not anybody else's. Classic case of needs in conflict.

corneas? Why arent you off somewhere gazing

We shouldn't have stayed so long." "Water under the bridge, Buddy Boy." Buddy wondered why his father would bring up anything as scary as the river flowing under the railroad bridge. Especially at a time like this.

Maybe when you put tears away uncried, everything you cry about from that day on contains a little of those tears. Whether you wanted them released or not.

I was born with the caul. According to Grandma Ginsberg, this signified great things. But it proved a disappointment. Yes, I was the smartest child in all of my classes, the most morbidly mature that any of my teachers had seen, save my sister DeeDee. Yes, I was spiritually advanced, but in my family this was nothing special.

He gently set the hat back in place, and stared into its light-ringed darkness, surviving the pain of each second individually. What was the point, though, really, of surviving an hour-long second if another waited right behind it, also needing to be survived? But it made him feel panicky to think about that, so he returned to the one-second-at-a-time plan.

I overheard her tell my mother that it didn't matter anyway, because we were entirely too young to understand a term like indecent exposure. She didn't realise that children file away such words, awaiting definition.

As he sat down at the cool Formica table to eat his cereal, he heard Sadie, his curly-coated retriever, awake and ready to go, excited by the prospect of a light on in the house before sunrise. He sat listening to the periodic ringing of the chain-link of her kennel run as she jumped up and hit it with her front paws. Born and bred for just such a morning as this, Sadie recognized a good duck hunt at its first visible or audible indication.

But people do plenty of harm when they didn't mean any. It happens all the time.