Quotes from Catherine Ryan Hyde

Every now and then my love for that child hit me so hard I felt bowled over. Like a turtle knocked upside down onto its shell, unable to right itself. This was one of those moments.

Everything grows best in oxygen and sunlight except secrets and guilt and regrets. They

Not everybody who marries in the church and has a family the old-fashioned way is unhappy." "No, but some are. And even if it's just hit-and-miss . . . even if anybody can fall through the cracks, it's still not what I thought I was buying into at all. It still all feels like it makes no sense.

If you think having and losing is so bad, try never having. Now that's devastating.

The drinks were so perfect, so visually artistic. Virginia could honestly believe she would find her salvation in one.

What does it mean when someone loses the use of most of his brain, and it makes him more kind?

And in this one perfect but probably fleeting moment . . . nothing in my life has ever been a mistake.

Yeah. That's the problem with trials. Somehow they have it in their heads, the judge and jury, that they'll decide what's the truth. But the truth already happened. They can't decide what happened. They can only be right or wrong about it. Seems like too many times they're wrong.

There is no boogeyman. Just a bunch of flawed humans, some more flawed than others, but more or less cut from the same human mold.

But sometimes things happen that shouldn't happen. And sometimes there's not a damn thing we can do to stop them. But it's not definite yet. We'll just have to wait and see.

We just made the mistake of putting it off. We thought we would lose nothing by putting it off. We thought we had plenty of time. I guess that was our key mistake, right? We thought there would always be more time. Why do we do that? I mean, not just Luis and me. Everybody. Why does everybody do that? Think we'll have more time?

Maybe you hate a thing more than anything. But it's what is. To accept it means to see that it is that way, and that it won't be another way no matter how much you hate it.

Once you get that sense that there's no real security, that anything at all can happen to you, then every minute you're okay is a joy. Part of the joy is feeling like you can make your way in a world that isn't always easy.

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. And my challenge is to decide where I'll place the bulk of my attention. What I'll most believe in.

His grandfather probably would have said that all men feel fear, but cowardly men deny it.

I've practiced "alone" a lot, and I'm good at it.

Why be given hours and days if all you want to do is make them go away again?

But sometimes the hard parts of our lives come with something valuable attached.

That's the lovely thing about having an animal. You might not want to get up for your own sake, but you will bring yourself to do it for them.

took her hands away from her face. It was hard to do. She knew she looked a wreck. But if you can't trust a man to look at your real face and not run screaming, what good is it to have him around in the first place?

Sometimes when things happen you just let them go, one by one, because it's easier. You pretend they don't mean as much as they do. I should've had my eyes open about that, but you can't go back and second-guess things. It's just that when we sat around and thought about the things we really loved, which you do when you're away at war, mostly what came to me were experiences.

Nothing hurts like romance.

pretend that the world could not—would not—strike with no notice, offering up a loss that could take a person's breath away. Of course it can, she thought, and you know it better than just about anybody. We only pretend it can't, a minute or two at a time, to help us get up and out of the house in the morning.

That's stupid. What about a gun? A gun can kill you dead." "Only your body," Billy said. "It can't kill your soul. Words can kill your soul.