Quotes from Debbie Macomber

PEOPLE ARE LIKE TEA BAGS—YOU HAVE TO DROP THEM IN HOT WATER BEFORE YOU KNOW HOW STRONG THEY ARE.

If kindness can alter two people's attitudes toward each other, just imagine what it could do to change our world, one relationship at a time.

I feel as if I'm on an emotional roller coaster. One moment I'm feeling as low as I can get, and the next I'm soaring into the clouds. Just now, I'm in the cloud phase.

The death of a child forever scars a mother's heart.

Men, especially sick ones, are the biggest babies on earth," Barbara said wryly. "They get a little virus and think someone should rush in to make a documentary about their life-threatening condition. My advice to you is let him wallow in his misery all by himself.

Prim and proper, a cat woman . . .Hmm, I was left to wonder. Possibly a librarian in her late forties or early fifties. In town for a special occasion? It certainly left me to ponder her story.

The sunlight had broken through the trees and landed on her like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

Justine refused to risk the pain that real closeness could bring. She'd been with her twin brother when he died, and the love she felt for him had turned into agony. Caught up in her own grief, Olivia had failed to recognize the devastating effect his death had had on her daughter.

Remember, good things come to those who wait.

Not knowing what else to try, she got out her heavy cast-iron skillet and banged it against the top of the rad in hopes of reviving the ageing pipes. The noise was deafening, vibrating through the room like a jet aircraft crashing through the sound barrier.

With the long hours of daylight in the Alaska summers, the gardens served up a cornucopia of amazing and extra-large produce.

this woman was trouble the first moment he saw her and heard her exuberant "good morning." Even her name was cheerful: Julia. Looking at her, it was easy to envision the opening scene from The Sound of Music, with Julie Andrews twirling around, arms extended, singing, joyful, excited.

What the people around me failed to understand was that my life as I'd known it, as I'd wanted it, as I'd dreamed it, was over. The only way I could achieve fulfillment was to find myself a new one.

At times he could be charming and gracious, which was what had made it so hard to leave him. His ability to be tender and loving was equal to his capacity to be deceptive and underhanded. He could rip out my heart and then be the first one to pick it up and hand it back to me.

CECILIA RANDALL HAD heard of people who, if granted one wish, would choose to live their lives over again. Not her. She'd be perfectly content to blot just one twelve-month period from her twenty-two years. The past twelve months.

Like anything else, friendship was an investment in time.

Love that isn't faithful has little value. It really isn't love at all.

I'm being very selfish with myself right now. Taking care of me, feeding my own soul.

But she was wrong. Loneliness was insidious. It knew no border or boundary, was without mercy, and couldn't be bribed. That was what Mary had attempted to do, bargain with the deep well of pain within her by marrying a man who by his own word would never love her.

if he'd learned anything in his four-year marriage it was that women were rarely practical when it came to matters of the heart.

You can't bring back the past," he said. The words were filled with regret. "No," she agreed softly, "you can't. Today, this minute. Now is all that matters.

Darlene used to say it was a couple's duty to keep their eyes open, their ears open, their hearts open and their mouths shut.

I ignored what was going on behind my back because that was the only way I could deal with it.

He needs what humans call luck, and we both know there's no such thing as luck, only God