Rachel Simon > Quotes

“A person comes into the world with a fist-and a grasp. Yes, we are built to fight one another, but also to embrace. How cleverly we are created.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“There were two kinds of students who liked the library: those who devoured one book after another and those who savored the same book repeatedly. Now she understood those rereaders differently ... she realized it was not the rereading that led to fresh insights. It was the rereader-- because when a person is changing inside, there are inevitably new things to see.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“Silence made space for other people's words, which was important for those who needed to be listened to.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“There are two kinds of hope: the kind you couldn't do anything about and the kind you could. And even if the kind you could do something about wasn't what you'd originally wanted, it was still worth doing. A rainy day is better than no day. A small happiness can make a big sadness less sad.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“A rainy day can actually be a very important day. And a small hope isn't really small if it makes a lost hope less sad.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“She felt so lovely in his hands. She felt so loved in his eyes.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“How many other lives are hidden, and hearts are seeking? How many would give anything in the world to be held by the person they love?”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“Happiness, I have grasped, is a destination, like strawberry Fields. Once you find the way in, there you are, and you'll never feel low again.”
― Rachel Simon, Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey

“she realized it was not the rereading that led to fresh insights. It was the rereader—because when a person is changing inside, there are inevitably new things to see”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“A small happiness can make a big sadness less sad.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“Sometimes you think you know what you want, she said, hugging her children, until you see how much more you can have.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“...she had wondered which was worse: the sudden good-bye you know is a good-bye or the long good-bye you have to guess.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“But never had come first.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“... she's sad a lot. She's sad in the way Laura wears glasses and Max has freckles and Beth is retarded. There's no reason, it's just the way it is.”
― Rachel Simon, Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey

“Maybe we are all Beths, boarding other people's life journeys, or letting them hop aboard ours. For a while we ride together. A few minutes, a few miles. Companions on the road, sharing our air and our view, our feet swaying to the same beat. Then you get off at your stop, or I get off at mine. Unless we decide to stay on longer together.
p 251”
― Rachel Simon, Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey

“He thought that maybe when you're making your way forward into your life, it just looks higgledy-piggledy, the way, if you were a fly walking across one of Beautiful Girl's drawings all you'd be able to see was green, then blue, then yellow. Only if you got in the air before the swat came down would you see the colors belonged to a big drawing, with the green for this part of the picture, the blue and yellow for others, every color being just where if was meant to be. Could that be what life was?”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“And Lynnie understood. There were two kinds of hope: the kind you couldn't do anything about and the kind you could. And even if the kind you could do something about wasn't what you'd originally wanted, it was still worth doing. A rainy day is better than no day. A small happiness can make a big sadness less sad.
p 313

"The sky was crying outside, and as she watched the drops come down, she thought: A rainy day can actually be a very important day. And a small hope isn't really small if it makes a lost hope less sad."
p 318

Lynnie about the lost hope of finding Homan, the hope of seeing the lighthouse/connecting with her daughter and how selling her art work was doing something about it.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“Follow your inclination. It will take you to the thoughts you'd never known you'd had.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“Then," he says, "as my mind got functioning, everything was just beautiful. There was no right or wrong feeling, no social pressure. I believe that's what heaven's going to be like..."
p 55”
― Rachel Simon, Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey

“Yes, we can all cart our fractured selves along as we move through our lives. But we can choose whether we keep plodding along the same rutted road, or take a turn we'd never thought was ours to take.”
― Rachel Simon, Building a Home with My Husband: A Journey Through the Renovation of Love

“Well, ain't that just the way of the world. Everything come to an end, whether you wants it to or not. All that nature out there: over. The Snare: dead and gone. Even a love that make a man giddy and romantic, that give him a hope and joy he never known, that brave him into taking a slingshot to the impossible and bringing it almost complete to its knees -- even a love like that come to an end. Life just ashes to ashes and dust to dust. And there is nothing you can do about it neither. (Homan)”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“There were two kinds of hope: the kind you couldn’t do anything about and the kind you could. And even if the kind you could do something about wasn’t what you’d originally wanted, it was still worth doing. A rainy day is better than no day. A small happiness can make a big sadness less sad.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“When change happened to an individual, it happened to everyone around her - sometimes in ways she wished for, though sometimes in ways she wished against"
Lynnie p 228-229”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“But those were only the headlines. The more important stories lay deep inside...

p 292”
― Rachel Simon, Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey

“How many others are out there? How many other lives are hidden, and hearts are seeking? How many would give anything in the world to be held by the person they love?”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl

“So you never know when you can get through.

p 179 Jack the Bus Driver talking about helping a woman on the bus who was an alcoholic”
― Rachel Simon, Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey

“I realize, as the tightness yields in my shoulders and hips and feet, that Beth might well have wanted me to meet her drivers because I needed them, too."
p 167”
― Rachel Simon, Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey

“Just because I am not a saint does not mean that I am a demon”
― Rachel Simon, Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey

“Looking back in time was very exciting to me. But looking forward is more challenging—nothing unfolds as you anticipate, and it’s the small things, not the huge geologic shifts, that make or break you.”
― Rachel Simon, Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey

“Martha sat back. She felt her chest heaving, and in the silence that followed, she looked into Julia’s eyes and saw, past the challenging stance, the self-loathing, the effects of the wine, Lynnie. And Martha knew, as she hadn’t until now, why she couldn’t tell Julia the whole story. It wasn’t only because Martha wanted to restrain herself from teaching Julia a harsh lesson or because she wanted Julia to be grateful for her sacrifices. It was because Julia’s low regard for herself had taken her into misguided friendships, petty crime, and, now, bigoted words. Maybe someday she’d be ready for the truth, but not when she thought so disparagingly, so dismissively, about people like her very own parents.”
― Rachel Simon, The Story of Beautiful Girl