Quotes from Catherine Ryan Hyde

I worked on smiling at her, so she'd smile back. But it was an effort for me, a trip into the unfamiliar. It made me think of the tin man in The Wizard of Oz,

You see something you like in a man, so you ask him in, but what comes in is all of him. Not only the parts you took a liking to, but the many parts that don't fit with you at all. That's always the way it worked.

People get by in all kinds of situations. All over the world people are getting by on almost nothing. Losing things they think they can't live without. Or at least that they think they can't be happy without. But then it's pretty hard to be happy . . . you know . . . if it's dependent on some material possession not going away. I don't

All he had to do was not look down. And yet he always looked down. Every time. The more he told himself not to look down, the more he looked. It was a key example of life running frustratingly out of his control. Even Buddy seemed to be outside Buddy's sphere of influence.

No," he said. "Go." He snapped the last snap of Maya's onesie and lifted her by her underarms, setting her on her freshly dry butt in her crib. Then he took me by both shoulders. "I'll take tomorrow off work. I'll call it in as a family emergency. I'll put the baby's car seat in my car, and Maya and I will drive out to Bakersfield and pick up your mom.

Maybe sometimes you just have a couple of rotten choices. Like you can fail to comprehend the world you've got, or you can see it as this ugly, evil, dangerous place and not be able to do a damn thing about it.

I'm not suggesting you need to welcome him back into your life with open arms as the years go by. Some people just plain aren't worth it. Whether this one is or isn't, that's for you to judge. I'm just advising you to let go of the hate in yourself, because you're the one swallowing that poison every day, not him." Ethan

There was something familiar in her energy. And yet I didn't want to use that word, because it sounded too flaky and new-agey, and I didn't even know if I believed that people had an energy. But there's something in a person you can feel, so that you know a little bit about him before he even opens his mouth. I just wasn't sure what to call it.

Nathan had never liked anger. It seemed a barbaric and undignified emotion. He knew it always masked fear or hurt, and had often wished everyone could simply be sensible enough to cut out the middleman.

My job was not to exist at all. Though too much alive to play it to perfection, I feel I performed a fairly adept imitation.

If you listen to people, they'll tell you a lot, even when they don't mean to.

She still didn't like the idea. But she wouldn't question me again. She placed the judgment of her humans ahead of her own, as a matter of courtesy and pride, even if she was always right and we were always wrong. Good dogs are like that.

curiosity has its glue-like qualities.

By staying in the moment as much as possible. And accepting what is.

Kids do stupid things. Even kids with good parents do stupid things. They're kids. No matter how you raise them, they're going to take a cruise through Stupid Land.

you from putting it completely behind you.

In my humble and exhausted opinion, joy beats comfort every time.

I think god made a mistake with me. I think I should have been a horse. He probably has a lot on his mind, you know. I don't just mean I want to be a horse, or I wish I was. I mean I think I am, only stuck in the wrong shell.

my thoughts about happiness: I've been experimenting with the idea that it's a decision. Now, that's an easy statement to argue. You may say, "But there's so much I can't control, and it makes me unhappy." Right. True. There's a lot we can't control. But if we could be happy anyway, then we could be happy.

They can't just be in that moment of grief with you. They can't just say, 'Yeah, this is some pretty awful stuff.' They have to try to fix it. They have to solve it for you in a couple of sentences, which is ridiculous, because it never solves anything.

Nobody will ever shoot me, and you know it. They will shoot my friend Luis, but they will never shoot me. And the people on the other side, they don't even see it. I see my privilege because I have lived both with it and without it. The jury did not even see. They did not even see, Raymond. What can you do with

She thought about the rifles and the dead animals in the living room, and the vote of no confidence in cats. They reminded her what it meant to allow someone into your life. You see something you like in a man, so you ask him in, but what comes in is all of him. Not only the parts you took a liking to, but the many parts that don't fit with you at all. That's always the way it worked.

mean. The biggest regret of his life has been having no last name, no pictures of Pearl, and no way of knowing who his father was. Oh, by the way . . .

Then, like anything else that can't be understood, that can't be influenced, we let it go by.