Quotes About Hope

The trouble with our praying is, we just do it as a means of last resort.

Lord, let me live until I die.

If heathen prayers were indeed the best of all, then mine should count big time.

Mom would often talk about a refugee boy she'd met in a hospital in Afghanistan. He was the victim of a land mine and had lost a leg. She said to him that she brought greetings to him from schoolchildren in New York. "Tell them not to worry about me," this little boy told her from his hospital bed. "I still have one leg.

When I think back on all the refugee camps I visited, all over the world, the people always asked for the same thing: books. Sometimes even before medicine or shelter--they wanted books for their children. (quoting his mother)

all over the world, the people always asked for the same thing: books. Sometimes even before medicine or shelter—they wanted books for their children.

That day at chemo, we talked once more about the ending of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. "I just really want to know which character dies. I've read the ending again and again," I said. "I hate not knowing." "I do too. That's why I always read endings first. But sometimes you just can't know what's going to happen, even when you know everything there is to know. So you prepare for the worst but hope for the best.

It was the women of afghanistan,my mother believed,who-once they'd been granted access to books and education- would be the salvation of the country

A phrase the doctor used had reassured Mom—"treatable but not curable.

What does one say to someone who has just been diagnosed with such a dire illness?

A Thousand Splendid Suns, the new book by Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner.

Often we feel the need to say that a book isn't just about a particular time or place but is about the human spirit. People say this of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, or Night by Elie Wiesel, or A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah.

book called The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch,

Everything would be all right, everything would be possible, anything could be salvaged or averted, as long as we all kept running around.

The Bite of the Mango,

That's the point, Will. You can't control the beatings. But maybe you can have some control over your happiness. As long as he can, well then, he still has something worth living for. And when he's no longer able, he knows he's done all he can.

Usually, Mom popped right up after that [chemo] and gathered her things, and we were on our way. Today she remained in the chair. "Are you okay, Mom?" I asked. She looked very tired. "I am feeling a little sad. I know there's a life everlasting - but I wanted to do so much more here.

I realized then that for all of us, part of the process of Mom's dying was mourning not just her death but also the death of our dreams of things to come. You don't really lose the person who has been; you have all those memories.

The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly.

Ishmael Beah's memoir of his life as a boy soldier in Sierra Leone, A Long Way Gone.

And when people would say to Mom, "I'll include you in my prayers," it gave her great solace. It wasn't a platitude for her—when she knew people were praying for her, it was something concrete and immense.

The greatest dreams are always unrealistic.

I have seen groups of people overcome incredible odds as they became aware they are participating in a cause beyond self and sense the movement of the inexorable which comes from unity. Violence is not inevitable. War is not inevitable. Nonviolence and peace are inevitable. We can make of this world a gift of peace which will confirm the presence of universal spirit in our lives. We can send into the future the gift which will protect our children from fear, from harm, from destruction.11

I remember when I was 11, I told my mom, 'One day I'm going to buy you a house.' And she said, 'Boy, don't you be making promises you can't keep.' I was like: 'No, Ma, it's not a promise. I'm going to buy you a house one day.'