Quotes from Catherine Ryan Hyde

Bag in hand, she cut across what might have been green lawn if this hadn't been the Central California Valley. If it hadn't been more or less one hundred degrees all summer, including now. Instead her boots crunched over a sea of wood chips on the way to Barn C. She had to take a "long cut" to avoid a watering truck that was spraying down the path to keep the dust to a minimum

You have to dance especially at a time like this. That's the whole point. The dancing will bring you back into the moment. It's the dance that will save you.

The thing about a family is the love. The 'what kind?' and 'how will it work?' is nothing. That's just a thing you worry about before you learn that those details aren't what matter at all.

Even if this was the only thing I ever did in my whole life, it would be worth having a life just to do this." We

I have a number of questions. If I had half as many answers, I'd be in great shape.

at a time, to help us get up and out of the house in the morning.

I had all these hours that added up to all these days, and I look back and it seems my goal was mostly to make them go away. But that's not a proper life. That's not really living.

You can't point to this joy, Jordy. You'd have to point everywhere at once. And if you point everywhere at once, then you're not really pointing anywhere at all." I

It was a strange comfort, to simply trust her daughter to experience the world for herself. To learn on her own, instead of being force-fed lessons from jaded adults who thought they could predict the outcome of any situation.

I knew better than to believe a family was anything like the ones you saw on TV, and my own experience was disaster oriented at almost all times, but I knew—if only from the family I'd begun to form with Sean and Maya—that there was such a thing as people functioning together. Maybe not every minute of every day, but long enough to form a decent holiday. Maybe even a decent life.

There is water within our reach. We only have to reach for it.

There's some things in this life you can change and some you can't. I'm sure August tells you the same thing. Here's what you do when the time comes to talk to your dad. Here's what I do. I say to my creator, 'I'm about to open my mouth here. And, historically, that's been a dicey thing, as we both know. So some help is in order. So let me know what you want me to say to this person in this situation. Say it through me.

he wouldn't meet August's eyes. "Um . . ." he said after a time. "We'll be too far away." "I've got my camera with the super zoom." Seth buckled the belt and threw it back on the picnic table with a huge, jangly clank. Then he took August by the arm and led him around to the rear door of the motor home.

Man does not live by wimpy coffee.

about how when you're not looking it's a wave, and then when you are looking it's a particle. Like it's not actual matter till you look at it. And the thing about quantum superpositioning? How one thing can be in more than one place at the same time but still have the same reaction to some kind of stimulus even if the two things are miles apart, because it's not two things, it's one thing in two places?

the problem with unforgivable. The more I research the bodymind, the more I get that the only workable path to workable health is to forgive the unforgivable in spite of its unforgivability.

Do you know that in France they take their dogs right into the restaurants with them? And last I heard, the French were not dropping like flies.

There are all manner of things that scare us at some point in our lives, but then later we find out they really never meant to hurt us anyway.

though he should gather the silence into his arms and apologize to it. She

Well, if we're being honest with ourselves, it's hard most of the time. But we have each other. What else do we have but each other? And what would we do without each other? It would be unbearable.

It's hard to find a particular place when you don't one hundred percent know you're even looking for it,

Why is it that years can go by, and it feels like nothing moves, and then the whole world changes three or four times in a couple of weeks? I could never figure that out.

until my brain was overloaded. I felt like I was blowing fuses in my head.

You know, Willie, I never meant to hurt myself. I just didn't want the disease. I wouldn't do something against me. I don't think anybody ever does. You must know that, Willie. Everybody's just trying to stay safe. Even people who try to kill themselves, I bet they're still on their own sides, Willie. They just want to kill the pain. Everybody just wants to kill the pain.