Nancy Johnson > Quotes

“...a lifetime of lies never added up to anything good. A lifetime of doing the wrong things for the right reason. A lifetime of lies that started small, like a nick in the windshield, then eventually shattered the glass.”
― Nancy Johnson, The Kindest Lie

“She knew they still had unfinished business and a lot to work through to make things right again. But maybe it wasn't about going back to some earlier point in time in their marriage. Maybe you just continued wherever you were, wiser from all you knew, stronger from all the burdens you'd carried.”
― Nancy Johnson, The Kindest Lie

“No one talked about what happened in the summer of 1997 in the house where Ruth Tuttle had grown up.

And at the start of this new year, Ruth imagined the ancestors dancing somewhere right along with them.”
― Nancy Johnson, The Kindest Lie

“He said he drove up there to march with them holding a sign that screamed in bold letters I AM A MAN. Every time he talked about it, Ruth thought there was something screwed up about a world where a man needed to carry a sign to remind the world and maybe even himself that he was indeed a man.”
― Nancy Johnson, The Kindest Lie

“Men kept their hurt tucked away deep on the inside. If it rose high enough to spill out of them, they ran it off on the basketball court, drowned it in a bottle, or buried it deep inside a woman. But they rarely talked about it.”
― Nancy Johnson, The Kindest Lie

“You’re only dealt one hand in life. May be a bad hand, but it’s yours to play. You must play it well. Do you hear what I’m saying to you?”
― Nancy Johnson, People of Means: An Evocative Saga of Love, Sacrifice, and Family Legacy Across Two Generations Fighting for Equality

“He never asked for anybody’s pity for how his family earned a living because when the struggle bore fruit in the lives of the children, and they found their way to freedom, that’s all that mattered, and by that definition, Ernie and Matilda Moore were indeed people of means.”
― Nancy Johnson, People of Means: An Evocative Saga of Love, Sacrifice, and Family Legacy Across Two Generations Fighting for Equality

“Everyone simple knew it, with the certainty of new mornings dawning and darkness eclipsing the day.”
― Nancy Johnson, The Kindest Lie

“Perfect mothers didn't exist, only perfectly flawed ones did.”
― Nancy Johnson, The Kindest Lie