Quotes About Reflection

There's no time to hold grudges when you've seen how fragile things can really be.

There is the before. And then there is the after. Happiness is what you choose, what you follow, not what follows you. These are the things I have seen, these are the things I now know, these are the things I will carry with me as I go.

I realize that lessons are meant to be learned, honored even, or else you can spend your life running so far from them that you erect a false existence around the very thing you should be embracing.

That you can look back fondly or even wistfully on pieces of your life and hound yourself with endless what-ifs, but nothing will change. The present will still be the present. The future will still unfold as it's meant to.

The past is who you are. The future is what you do with that.

Nothing is different here and now than it used to be: The people whom I need most are gone, and the ones who remain do nothing to help me get to where I need to go. Different names, different faces, but the end result is still the same.

regret is just misplaced nostalgia. That you can look back fondly or even wistfully on pieces of your life and hound yourself with endless what-ifs, but nothing will change. The present will still be the present. The future will still unfold as it's meant to.

The sun will sink lower soon enough, turning the fields into open black space, ushering another day out, another day in--one after the next.

The strangest thing about returning to an enclave that encapsulated your youth is that you feel like nothing should have changed. Like you still have the right to be twenty and carefree and irresponsible. Like you still are twenty and carefree and irresponsible.

It gets easier. Eventually you figure out what went wrong and you sort of breathe a sigh of relief that you didn't make a more permanent mistake. And then you just hope that you find someone who won't end up being another misstep.

The point of life wasn't to go back and litigate all those mistakes. The point, Cleo supposed, was to do better.

I knew that none of us are made any promises, none of us are ordained to be here forever, or even for as long as we want to believe. This is what nearly being robbed of time does to you: it leaves you glancing over both shoulders, wondering when it will catch up to you, wondering when its pace will quicken so you can no longer outrun it.

Allison Winn Scotch

Allison Winn Scotch

bit like a mouse. She thought of MaryAnne again and

Oh.' I shot upright. 'I was in Mongolia.' Note to self: learn to be a less extreme liar.

You should have had the decency to die when you needed to." "Sorry," I admitted. "I've been going through a bit of a rebellious streak. I swear it's almost over.

Sometimes the biggest lies we tell are to ourselves.

Maybe Liz was right and she'd wanted someplace safe. Maybe Mr. Solomon really did understand that running was the only way Macey would find out if we'd run after her. Or maybe, like me, she just wanted to disappear for a little while

She looked at him and shook her head, smiled a little as she told him, "You are so like your father." Then she looked past me and Zach, past Bex and Abby, to where Agent Townsend stood by the door with his arms crossed. "What do you think, Townsend, darling? Isn't he just like you?" She looked at Zach again. "I think he's just like you." And then she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

If he'd looked like a cross between Mr. Clooney and, say, one of the hobbits, I probably would have been far more capable of coherent thought.

I wrapped my arms around my knees and stared through the window's wavy glass. The red velvet curtains were drawn around the tiny alcove, and I was enveloped by an odd sense of peace, knowing that in twenty minutes, the halls were going to be crowded; music was going to be blaring; and I was going to go from being an only child to one of a hundred sisters, so I knew to savor the silence while it lasted.

But I kept it to myself--maybe because I didn't think it mattered, but probably because, in a place where everyone knew my story, it was nice to know there was a chapter that only I had read.

Eventually, we all end up alone.