Quotes from Catherine Ryan Hyde

Let's say you were starving. You were going to die any day of starvation. Would you go into a supermarket and steal a can of tuna?" "I'm a vegan." "Nobody's a vegan when they're starving.

you had been civil, he would have been the one to look bad. Not you. This way you appear to validate him. You give him all the ammunition he needs.

Still, everyone of us has something that makes him sad... And no one can save us from all of it.

We take all these little calculated risks. All the time. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand nothing goes wrong. And the one time it does, we blame the person who took the risk, tell them they should have known better than to ever do such a thing.

When somebody holds a view that seems to make no sense, know that it makes sense to them, but for reasons you don't know anything about yet.

was something contagious. "I'm not sure what you're

I guess the world will always be like this. I suppose we're built with complete free will, and as much as we're capable of depravity, to the same degree we are wired for greatness. Everyone gets to choose, I think.

Somebody should put a warning label on everything in life that's about fear. Being afraid to die, being afraid your daughter will die, being afraid of getting hurt in love. It should all have a warning label to let people know it can be habit-forming.

I seem to remember that Gandhi once said his commitment was to truth, not consistency.

People gripe about growing older—their aches and pains, how much harder everything is—as if they had forgotten that the alternative is dying young.

My initial solution came in the form of night rovings, like an owl or a coyote. I had been stagnating in the house too long, and some glowing ball of spirit in me threatened to fade to nothing, and I feared it might be like fire—you need fire to make fire, and you must never let the last of it die.

Everybody's on their best behavior during courting. That's just how the world works. It's how people work. Then, when they figure they've got you for keeps, that's when you find out what you've really gotten yourself into.

this was his single greatest quality: he made everybody feel dear. And the sad truth of this world is that not many people feel that way, and not much of the time. I

Let me go!" Seth shot out. "Tell me what's going on." "Not with you holding me prisoner." "I'm not holding you prisoner. I'm trying to hold you. I'm trying to put my arms around you and give you a hug, but you're fighting so hard you can't tell.

What a man eats, he should be willing to kill. It's not absolutely necessary that he do so, but he should at least be willing to face the reality of it.

it's a weird feeling to get well when you never even knew you'd been sick. I thought it was just normal, how I felt. And then it got better, and I thought, Damn.

It was her life. I mean, a person's life. It's all you've got. It's everything. Without it, you're . . . well, you're not. You're literally not anything.

It's just that this might be the last train to happy. And you want to make sure to get on it." Felipe

Most big life events are like that. You think they'll be emotionally one-sided, but when you actually get into them, it's always more complex.

It's always easier to take a risk when it's your own stuff you're risking. Nothing is harder than risking something that belongs to somebody else.

My older relatives grabbed me and latched onto me, and I felt like they wanted something from me. Their love felt like a demand. Then I let go and they pinched my cheeks and kissed them, and it only made me feel drained, like I had all the love and they only wanted to refill their tanks by taking some of mine.

So, who's stronger, the man who looks truth in the eye, or the man who tells himself lies to make it go away?

I have no idea if how I feel is what other people would call okay. I'm just the way I've always been.

It suddenly occurs to me that happy families probably don't repeatedly say out loud how happy they are. They probably think it goes without saying. They probably figure they all already know.