Quotes from Sara Zarr

Now I think miracles are things that happen in stained glass, and on dusty Jerusalem roads thousands of years ago. Not here, not to us. Not when we need them.

All summer they'd been pushing me towards my freedom and now I wanted to claim it

Mom always says that doubt is just another way of expressing faith... This is different than doubt. This is something I've never felt before, a total absence of whatever it is that's made me who I am, on the inside, all my life.

Right now it's like we're three islands, and nothing but oceans between us.

I remember being in high school and listening to Vivaldi's 'Winter' and being so overwhelmed with emotion.

I tend to describe recurring themes as being part of a writer's DNA - something so deeply embedded in us that even we don't notice it until we've written three or four books.

Is it good, bad, or neutral to recognize thematic patterns in your own work? When it comes to recurring themes, I'm of the mind that knowledge is probably not power, at least in terms of the work.

It makes me think of Lazarus. He must have had those shadows after his miracle. You don't spend time in the tomb without it changing you, and everyone who was waiting for you to come out.

It's just so out of control. Life, I mean. The way it flies off in all these different directions without your permission.

Some people come into your life and leave a mark.

the past only had whatever power you gave it; life was what you made it and if you wanted something different from what you had, it was up to you to make it happen.

I don't want these memories to become slippery, to just disappear into the thin air of life the way most things seem to. I want them to stick – even the bad ones – so I repeat them often.

The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.

I'm so focused on trying to craft the story that I'm in my own little world with it and that process. The one reader I'm trying to please as I write is me, and I'm pretty difficult to please.

The characters are whole, real people to me that I'm getting to know, and since real people are all flawed, so are my characters, I hope.

Forgetting isn't enough. You can paddle away from the memories and think they are gone. But they will keep floating back, again and again and agian. They circle you, like sharks. Until, unless, something, someone? Can do more than just cover the wound.

There are certain people who come into your life, and leave a mark. . . Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business. Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless.

Your greatest creation is your creative life. It's all in your hands.

When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin.

Forgetting isn't enough. You can paddle away from the memories and think they are gone. But they will keep floating back, again and again and agian. They circle you, like sharks. Until, unless, something, someone? Can do more than just cover the wound.

Because love, love is never finished. It circles and circles, the memories out of order and not always complete.

That's how you know you really trust someone, I think; when you don't have to talk all the time to make sure they still like you or prove that you have interesting stuff to say.

the past only had whatever power you gave it; life was what you made it and if you wanted something different from what you had, it was up to you to make it happen.

Remember that no matter where I am or what I'm doing I've got a special place inside me that's all for you. It's been there since the day we met.