Quotes from Catherine Ryan Hyde

On Papua, actually, after you were gone. At least, that's the first that I know for sure I killed. That I saw. I watched his eyes while he was dying. Then I almost turned the gun on myself.

10. Before he met Mrs. G,

keep your food cold and a stove to cook it when you're ready to eat it. It has a bathtub and a shower to get you clean after your chores and a bed to lie down in at the end of the day. And that's all a person really needs. And I think the whole trouble with us is that we think we need so much more.

Lecture kids on all the terrible things that could happen. Like they think it's smart to imagine all the worst possible things that could happen and then make sure you imagine them right along with them. And I don't get that at all, because good things could happen, too. So

Don't ever say that to me again. It was not nothing. You did an incredible thing for your father. And you always have that. It's part of who you are now. You stepped up to it, and now you're up on a higher level than you were before. You gave the man a gift. The fact that he doesn't know how to value it doesn't mean it wasn't a great gift. It just means he has lousy taste in presents.

The grief made the simplest movements of life feel like more than he could bear, and he had no idea how long he would have to live this way.

I have to go," I said. "Thanks for the tents." I ran all the way back in the rain. But… back to what? It wasn't like this rented patch of dirt was any kind of shelter. It wasn't really much of anything. But just at the moment, it was all we had. I had no choice but to think of it as home.

Most people prefer to think that their resentment is entirely the fault of the person they resent, and that twisted logic seems to make sense in their minds. But it makes no sense to me at all. It's like saying it's your fault if I shoot you, because the gun is aiming at you. It completely disregards who's doing the aiming. But it's a popular point of view. Probably because it's so much easier. It relieves you of the burden of any and all self-examination.

Then, yes. It's civilized. 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. To eat a chicken only if it comes from the market is the height of cowardice and denial. Someone still had to kill it.

Once you decide to put all your energy into being scared of something, you might wake up one day and find out you have no idea how to stop. It happens to people. More often than anybody seems willing to admit.

Well, child, I'd tell you to be careful, except for two things. One, it wouldn't do any good anyhow. And two, I think we tell each other that too much. Be careful. Don't get hurt. Don't take chances. Don't try anything. Don't feel. Might as well be telling each other not to be alive at all. Boils down to the same thing.

You can't make somebody leave and you can't make them stay.

Just for a brief moment she pictured leaving this place. Wondered how long they would be allowed to stay here and where she would go when this odd segment of her life was over. She had just left a life when she met Sarah and her grandmother—a life that was now completely in the past—and had not yet built a new one on her own. So the idea of returning to her own life felt nebulous at best, meaningless at worst. How could she go back to a life that did not yet exist

You never know. In a world like this, you never know what's possible. So I figure, don't say it's possible, because you don't know. But, then again, don't say it's not possible. Because you don't know that, either.

We all have to take ourselves out into the world, flaws and all. And find a way to make the adjustment.

maybe that's redundant. Maybe that's the only kind of attorney there is.

I have no idea what to do." Which was my mom's way of saying, "Now you do something." When my mom said she was out of ideas, it meant I had to step up.

I watch the rain stream down the windows in the dark. It gives me a feeling that the whole world is taking a moment to be sad.

It's a lot of work for something that's always going to fall down at the end. But then, all of life is like that. Right?

Once you misplace the ability to be yourself without thinking about it, without second-guessing it, you're pretty well cooked.

She said we'll let people abuse us as much as we're willing to abuse ourselves. But once they start treating us worse than we treat ourselves, then we know they have to go.

When you assume, you make an ass of you and me.

That his inability to express what he was feeling had formed such a tight and inescapable box around his being that he could barely breathe.

Now how the hell am I supposed to make amends to myself?" "Don't hurt yourself anymore." It was like someone opened up the curtains and let light into the room, and all of a sudden I could see it was daylight, and had been all this time.