Sarah Adler > Quotes

“sometimes, if we’re lucky, beginnings and endings are choices we get to make.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“I suddenly understand that forever isn’t the part that I almost lost faith in. It was the millions of right-nows along the way.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“he doesn’t try to argue or manipulate me out of my weirdness. In fact, he seems to look for ways to make me more comfortable in it.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“Because watching you exist in the world, trusting and loving and beautifully strange . . . it makes these feelings even heavier, yet somehow easier to bear.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“Why do it, then?” she asks. “Why do something that’s probably going to hurt?” “Oh, doll,” he says, sounding for the first time like the much older—and perhaps wiser?—soul he actually is. “Because it hurts so much more not to.”
― Sarah Adler, Happy Medium

“There are a lot of things that don’t go your way over ninety-some years, she told me once when I asked how she remained so unaffected by it. You learn to take it in stride and be extra grateful for the things that do.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“Well, what can I do?” I ask. Hollis chuckles, but there isn’t much humor in the sound. “To change my personality? Nothing. Many people have tried, none have succeeded. I’m like a haunted house. They go in very brave and confident, but they always run away screaming.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“But what do promises really mean in the grand scheme of things? When it comes down to it, a promise is little more than an earnest intention; I’ve learned that the universe tends to laugh at those and do its own thing anyway.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“Maybe that’s why I’m so willing to think the best of people. I don’t want to assume malice when mostly we’re all just victims of the universe’s whims.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“I have never once claimed to make sense as a person. And I would appreciate it if you would stop remarking on my idiosyncrasies as if you’ve caught me in some continuity error.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“Of course there are ways. Women who love women and men who love men have existed forever, formed families of their own. But society isn’t eager to embrace them. It doesn’t hand them their dreams on a platter. They have to fight for their happiness.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“have never once claimed to make sense as a person. And I would appreciate it if you would stop remarking on my idiosyncrasies as if you’ve caught me in some continuity error.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“You can always judge a person by the quality of their apology....”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“If I’m sunshine, he’s a constant low rumble of thunder.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“I barely knew you—we’d only met in passing a few times—but I could tell that you were this bright, sunshine sort of person. Seeing you cry . . . it’s like watching the sun flickering out. Like I’m getting a preview of the apocalypse. A horrible glimpse into a world that’s colder and darker—”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“it’s like all of my grief and worry scatter to the recesses of my brain to make room for one blissful moment where nothing exists but joy and love and release.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“I’ve already become so used to the way Hollis makes me lean into the strongest parts of myself that I forgot how easy it is to be stripped down to something faded and fragile.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“close my eyes to savor the way the sensation pulls at some intricate knot low in my stomach, threatening to unravel it.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“Fear is simply love wrapped up in an ugly bow. Think about the times you have thought you felt afraid. I would bet everything I own that, if you are honest with yourself, every moment of supposed fear is, beneath it, simply an instinct to retain what you love and value in this world.”
― Sarah Adler, Finders Keepers

“How much shower stuff does he think one woman needs for a month? It's like how NASA tried to send Sally Ride to space for one week with a hundred tampons "just in case.”
― Sarah Adler, Happy Medium

“Sometimes things aren't as complicated as we try to make them.”
― Sarah Adler, Finders Keepers

“I’d rather you have happiness with someone else than be miserable with me.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“I hoped when she died that she might continue to exist inside my head, and she sort of does. I can see her vividly, but she never speaks unless it’s a replay of a memory. Because I am the one who would have to generate what she says now, and I know that any words I put into her mouth wouldn’t be hers. Just mine in disguise. Somehow that’s more depressing than her not talking at all.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“I was afraid to use up Mom's limited supply of love and care. But as she places a gentle kiss on my temple before making her way to the kitchen, I understand now it's the most limitless thing on the planet. That reverberations of it will remain even after she's gone.”
― Sarah Adler, Finders Keepers

“I learned much too late that the problem with living inside the stories we tell ourselves is that sometimes it obscures what's real and in front of us all along.”
― Sarah Adler, Finders Keepers

“Who cares what he thinks? You must always do what is right for you, Millie. What is right for anyone else doesn’t matter, because you are the one who will live with your decisions.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“You must always do what is right for you, Millie. What is right for anyone else doesn’t matter, because you are the one who will live with your decisions.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“I am a competent adult woman who can handle whatever life throws at me. But I’m so glad I don’t have to prove it right now.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“Like the scent version of reading your favorite book in a worn leather chair with a cup of Earl Grey tea while rain patters against the windowpane.”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes

“wound up here, sitting cross-legged on the floor at National Airport,”
― Sarah Adler, Mrs. Nash's Ashes