Sue Halpern > Quotes

“But it's a little like that children's book, THE VELVETEEN RABBIT, but in reverse: if you're not loved for who you are, you cease to be real. Definitely for the other person, and maybe for yourself, too.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“But then I tell myself that it wasn't as if justice was going to be served no matter what I did. Justice didn't stand a chance. And I hate that. I hate that I stopped believing in things I didn't even know were matters of belief, like justice and fairness. Or honesty. Or the promises people make to each other. Of all the things Cal took from me, that's when I think I miss the most: the apparently naïve belief that you kept your promises. You know what the prosecutor told me? ;Everyone cheats,' as if that was supposed to make it all right.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“It's stupid, really," I began again. "But it was this thing I read someplace, and it really got to me. It said that a dictionary is every book ever written and every book that will be written, just in a different order. And it seemed magical. You could own every book just by owning one book. I loved that. And I just had to have it,”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“I realize no one thinks being a librarian is as awesome as being a neurosurgeon, but I always thought I was doing something valuable, putting books in the hands of readers. Books can save lives, too. I really believe that.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“What you're thinking of as the end of the story now, is only the end of the chapter.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“Do you stop reading a book because you don't want to watch the characters you like turn out to be unlikable, or the ones with which you identify denied the happy ending you believe they deserve?”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“Though we are made of memories, we live only in the here and now.”
― Sue Halpern, A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home: Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher

“Somewhere in the unfolding story, something is going to happen that will change everything that happens after it.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“I think it's possible that when you think that the future might bring great sadness, you become more generous that you ever has been before, so you can carry other people's happiness with you.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“I don't think she's being mysterious on purpose. It's like she can't help it. She's not shy--she'll talk to anyone--and she's not exactly distant, but even so, she's unreachable, as if there's an invisible fence around her, or a force field the repels whatever gets too close.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“Trauma is not just one thing.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“The unasked-for gift of being with people at the end of their lives...is a simple but profound appreciation of the here and now of life itself.”
― Sue Halpern, A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home: Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher

“And most, like me, were drawn to the miracle of the blank page and how, when seeded with letters, it blossomed into words and sentences and paragraphs and stories.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“…goodness is ours to dispense. It's a currency that each of us gets to invent and denominate. David's had pictures of Chopin and Keith Richards on it. Mine had my dog.”
― Sue Halpern, A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home: Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher

“Everyone's life is an unfolding story, and all stories have good guys and bad guys, and all stories have conflicts and resolutions, and all stories--if they are interesting--have drama.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“...the reward for getting through life is getting life itself.”
― Sue Halpern, A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home: Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher

“Freedom, he was learning, was not a set point, like the temperature at which water freezes, but something mutable, a moving target.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“Don't assume that what happens in our future invalidates what happened in our past.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“What you've got to understand is that you didn't lose your life. You lost the life you thought you were living. And those are two different things. You are alive. It may not feel like it, but you are. And part of being alive means experiencing loss. We lose things every day - I'm not talking about eyeglasses - yes, we lose those, too - I mean things like eyesight. Our eyesight diminishes over time, our hair falls out. That's natural. It's so natural that we chalk it up to inevitability. But that's loss. Loss is inevitable. It comes in many sizes. Yours is huge - don't think I'm discounting it. But the small, everyday losses help us deal with the big ones. It's muscle memory.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“One thing I can suggest is that when you start to go to a dark place, for you to consciously redirect your thoughts. Mind over mind. Make yourself think of something completely different. An image of something joyful or silly, and focus on that.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“I already told you a ghost story," she said at last. "The one where the wife was invisible to the husband and the truth of the marriage was invisible to her.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“You know what I can't stand?" Kit said as they passed five carts of books that needed to be reshelved. "I can't stand the words "reading for pleasure." All these parents--most of whom haven't read a single book since high school, unless maybe they picked up THE DA VINCE CODE--drag their kids in here every summer and say, 'Find something to read for pleasure,' which just means that most of the time the message these kids are getting is that reading is not pleasurable. Do you see how that works? It's like reading is a punishment. I hate that.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“It was as if her mind were a theater where bad actors could be run off the stage by a pack of adorable, yelping dogs.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“A culture that values only what has succeeded before, where the first rule of success is that there must be something 'measured' and counted, is not a culture that will sustain alternatives to market-driven 'creativity.”
― Sue Halpern

“The only completely consistent people are dead.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“A dictionary is every book ever written and every book that will be written, just in a different order. And it seemed magical. You could own every book just by owning one book.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“I no longer know that story. The narrator is unreliable.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library

“If we are lucky, we get to live very long and healthy lives. If we are even luckier, we will be astonished by the sight of blue jays all the way through.”
― Sue Halpern, A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home: Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher

“There was an end, and it colors everything, even the beginning.”
― Sue Halpern, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library