Quotes from Catherine Ryan Hyde

I think I have something that belongs to you'. I held out my open hand, the stone resting in my palm. I expected her to take it. Instead she took the whole hand, and held it.

It flitted through her mind without actual words that skin is an odd thing for the world to make a fuss about, especially when, with your eyes closed, it all feels more or less the same.

You can't tell someone to pursue their dream only if it's a good match for your own. You can't dictate what dream he should pursue.

They just want to kill the pain. Everybody just wants to kill the pain.

It struck me that this was the second time in a couple of days that just yelling someone's name on the street could have spelled disaster. Then it struck me how wrong that was. To have to keep your life sectioned off like that. A signal that you'd fallen into a bad way to live.

But I bet more than half the people in the world right now are worrying about something that really is going to be okay.

The world will still be a place where people do terrible things. But here's the thing about despair. We fall into despair when the terrible gangs up on us and we forget the world can also be wonderful. We just see terrible everywhere we look. So what you do for your friend is you bring up the wonderful, so both are side by side. The world is terrible and wonderful at the same time. One doesn't negate the other, but the wonderful keeps us in the game. It keeps us moving forward.

there's something about standing on the top of a mountain you personally climbed at great sacrifice.

You can only wrestle with something for just so long. Then you have to break in one direction or another. Just to end the wrestling. Something has to give.

Is that really love? When it happens so fast? She sighed. Paused the movie. Sighed again. Some would say it's only love after you've been together long enough to work out who takes out the trash. And there's something to that. That part of love where you have to work at it. Learn to live together. But when you set eyes on that person, it's something. Call it what you want. If it turns into love, then maybe it's just love in all its stages. It's still real

Jody picked his way downhill along Highway 22, Worthy trotting along beside him on an improvised rope leash. Jody didn't like the rope. It looked shabby, and the last thing he wanted was to mark the dog's value that way.

Almost everything is easier to get into than it is to get out of.

The world is a tough place, my friend. I'm not ready to change my mind about that. And yet we're called upon to be grateful that we're in it. That seems to be our challenge.

We always say we'll never get used to change, but then the change happens and we do.

Why the remarkable commitment?" "Why not?" Nathan asked. "What else have I done with my life that's remarkable?

Luis comes along and decides that his definition of a man is someone who is not afraid to be kind. That takes courage.

Every life matters. Even if it's "them.

The most important thing I can add from my own observations is this: knowing it started from unremarkable circumstances should be a comfort to us all. Because it proves that you don't need much to change the entire world for the better. You can start with the most ordinary ingredients. You can start with the world you've got.

My daughter was mentally ill," I said. "So I know. It's an illness, just like it says in the phrase. It's not a moral failing. It's funny how people have empathy for a physical illness. They see it as bad luck, and they never question whether you can help it.

And you never have to change the water, because the horse does it for you, by drinking it down and triggering the valve to refill. So there's always fresh oxygen for the fish. And you never have to feed the fish, because they eat the algae. And so long as no hawks or eagles come by to go fishing, you're golden." "And they don't scare the horse?" "Never met a horse who cared.

I mean you can't change his mind. You can't change anybody's mind. No matter what you say to them. The sooner you figure that out, the happier your life will be." "But

I loved pain, followed it, thought it would cleanse me, right my wrongs.

Well, you're seeing what ain't there." Or what you wanted for yourself and never got. What we don't get, we see everywhere we look. What we won't let ourselves do, be, we refuse to tolerate in any other living soul. Arlene was beginning to notice this.

This darkness doesn't belong to the night. It belongs to me.