Quotes from Catherine Ryan Hyde

She doesn't want to move forward into the next part of her life; she can't move backward in time even if she tries. And she doesn't much like where she is.

Also, I should note that in my opinion, we're all wounded humans. The rest is just a matter of degree.

How would I even know that, Lucas? I have no idea if how I feel is what other people would call okay. I'm just the way I've always been.

I shall die, but . . . that is all that I shall do for Death.

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. Why didn't I take up oil painting, or learn to play the flute or something?

Son, don't you ever be sorry for saying what's really true, especially not in a room like this that's just made for that. The way you feel is the way you feel, and no matter how much you think you should feel some other way, you can't change that. There's some things in this life you can change and some you can't.

World is full of people so troubled they don't even understand themselves. You could offer them a thousand dollars to explain their motivations, but they can't tell you what they don't know. And most of those miserable creatures find their

It's always better to look. Whatever you're afraid of, turn toward it, not away. Once you're willing to do that, it loses all its power over you.

Chapter One The Tipping Day Is it just me, or does everybody have a day in their life like the one I'm about to retell? I'm talking about those days that act like a fulcrum between everything that came before and your brand-new life after. It

But then there's the other kind. They're not used to being seen. They want it but they don't want it. It's like bright sunlight. You live in the dark all your life, you want nothing more than to step out into that warm sun. But then it hurts your eyes because it's too bright. It burns you.

It struck me that she had been a pretty woman, once upon a time. Before she'd decided she didn't want to be anymore. Before she'd decided she didn't want to be anything to anybody.

can't make the world alcohol-free, and I wouldn't try. Those are things I can't control. But I control my home. And when I walk into the dining room or the kitchen and find an open bottle of booze in my living space, that's over the line. It has nothing to do with judging anybody else. I just know how I want to live in my own home.

See, that's always the thing. While you're breathing and being all happy that the whole house didn't come falling down, you know there's another card drop coming right up. It's not about gaining much. It's just about gaining. It's always about not losing everything in the exact moment you're in.

That gold star in the window. The symbol for a lost son. It broke you down.

food is the gift of the whole Universe. Each morsel is a sacrifice of life. May I be worthy to receive it. May the energy in this food give me the strength to transform my unwholesome qualities into wholesome ones. I am grateful for this food. May I realize the Path of Awakening, for the sake of all beings." Silence. "Namaste." "Amen," the little atheist

The lock had been cut close to the lock body, leaving a nice loop of shank that held the door closed.

Life gives us nothing outright. It only lends. Nothing is ours to keep. Absolutely nothing. Not even our bodies, our brains. This 'self' that we think we know so well, that we think of as us. It is only on loan. If a person comes into our life, they will go again. In a parting of ways, or because everyone dies. They will die or you will die. Nothing we receive in this life are we allowed to keep.

Well, here's a thought on that. Raise your ass up off your cot, take it out into the visiting room, and then your eyes will

He's not like the other cops. What does it mean, that I thought that? That I hated him so much?" "That you're human?" "Isn't that really bad, though? I mean, what does that say about me?" I sighed. "Considering you just saw yourself doing it . . . made that observation all on your own, at age thirteen . . . I'd say that puts you quite a bit ahead of most of the adults I know.

We can be angels to each other. We are angels to each other, all the time.

The fact that you do something as a result of an old, deeply internalized experience doesn't necessarily make it a bad thing to do.

The way our subconscious tells us that if it never happened before, it never will. But if it happened, especially pretty recently, it tells us it's about to happen again.

People with really good self-worth think they're the same size as everybody else, and they never make anybody else feel small. Any time somebody tries to act like they're more than you are, deep down they're afraid they're less. Otherwise they'd have nothing to prove.

It's like a sheet of blue-lined paper, the kind you write on at school, but with the lines suddenly missing. No structure. Nothing is predictable. Everything that might happen now is new. Sometimes disasters make me feel that way.