Quotes from Silas House

Being afraid of somebody who's different'll make an awful meanness come over you.

You can use the Word to judge and condemn people or you can use it to love them.

Easter, I don't want you to die and go to Heaven without having a little fun. The Lord forgives all things, honey. Live, sister!

Dogs know things. They know and know and know.

Only recently had he realized the way books could give a person wings.

If there had been mile markers on the side of the road, they would have clicked off the years instead of the miles: 1994...1982...1974.

It's like there are two worlds in Drama Club. The world onstage and the world backstage. It reminds me of how I feel all the time.

They would catch the lightning bugs that came up out of the laurels lining the creek and then put them into mason jars or wear them as glow rings on their fingers.

I throwed crumbs from last night's corn bread out onto the yard so redbirds would swoop down and peck at them.

I like that library books have secret lives. All those hands that have held them. All those eyes that have read them. I

I'd open my eyes and look out at the aching blue of the ocean–a color I had never seen in nature and that most likely only exists in the middle of the Atlantic, a gray blue like a storm cloud full of unspent lightning and unfallen rain.

I wasn't just seasick; I was undone in sorrow.

as long as there were still cedar trees and dogs, I reckoned I had a reason to keep going.

I waited for hours, until the day bloomed and eased itself over the sea.

Be still and know that I am God, she thought. Her favorite Bible verse. And stillness had saved her grandmother once. So that's what she had to do as well, to be still and let everything fall back into place on its own.

The world became smaller, yet louder.

There was some comfort in knowing that, although the world was being torn in two, there were still remarkable things that went on being, that refused to lose their shine. Some days it was only the wonder that kept us going.

I'll say this for her, she sticks to what she believes. But a person can believe something so hard they lose sight of everything else.

Nobody can just let a person be.

I had always found comfort in the leaves, in their silence. They were like a parchment that holds words of wisdom. Simply holding them in my hand gave me some of the peace a tree possesses. To be like that-to just be-that's the most noble thing of all.

Sometimes just being still is the best thing you can do for yourself.

I've never understood why people run to get out of the rain in the summertime... People will drive miles and miles to go jump in a cool swimming hole, but when it rains, they scatter.

Since that night I have come to understand that sometimes the best families of all are those we create ourselves, the people we choose to be with.

I always tell my writing students that every good piece of writing begins with both a mystery and a love story. And that every single sentence must be a poem. And that economy is the key to all good writing. And that every character has to have a secret.