Jane Kirkpatrick > Quotes

“Don’t deny the dreams. They’re a gift given to make your life full. Accept them. Reach for them. We are not here just to endure hard times until we die. We are here to live, to serve, to trust, and to create out of our longings.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Where Lilacs Still Bloom

“And there it is, my greatest challenge: to face the uncertainty of each day, trusting that there will be enough—enough to meet our needs and enough to give away.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, This Road We Traveled

“if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, What Once We Loved

“My mother always said to keep my eyes open for the unexpected good, the little treasures.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Every Fixed Star

“Give my effort to the present, let God handle the future.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, This Road We Traveled

“You ride horse of good intent," Naomi said. "It does not arrive at destination.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick

“they listened to understand rather than to respond.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, The Healing of Natalie Curtis

“A tragedy tears away a hope; a kindness brings it back.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, This Road We Traveled

“Some of what I remembered was not my own story. It was twisted like tobacco strands, tangled with a dozen other memories of people who were here and others who were not even a part of the terror.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, The Memory Weaver

“The essential code must include . . . how to crawl from the wreckage when this life falters, how to plunge to the cellar of sorrow and grope for the ladder that might bring you back into some kind of light, no matter how dim or strange.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, A Light in the Wilderness

“Old brooms swept away dust and disappointment, but both came back.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Something Worth Doing: A Novel of an Early Suffragist

“The visionary mind takes many turns before settling on any specific path.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, A Sweetness to the Soul

“But when she watched Clara Belle prance around the room, singing, she wondered why such joy should be kept only in the kitchen or in a church choir. Why were women with gifts not allowed to show them? And she could hear that her daughter had a gifted singing voice.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Something Worth Doing: A Novel of an Early Suffragist

“When your father died, I thought I'd die too. But then your heart keeps beating, you keep taking breaths and getting hungry and needing sleep, so you know you're not dead. One day, something makes you laugh and you're ripped with guilt because you can. A month passes and then a year, and you've gone on with your life even knowing you couldn't, but you do.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, All Together in One Place

“But most of all, being a doctor was about human warmth and understanding, about healing. Her medical book spoke of incarn, a word that meant “the growing of new flesh.” That referred not just to the human body but to a person’s soul. Listening with the heart grew new flesh; being present for another’s pain, even if one couldn’t stop it, brought healing. Healing also meant admitting that sometimes allopathic and homeopathic answers stood beyond their reach. Then a practitioner must create paths toward acceptance of mortality and do it with grace. It was the perfect venue for a woman’s place. Women ought not be left behind.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, All She Left Behind

“You haven't made the leap yet, Love...."

"The leap?"

"Onto a cloud of faith believing that we won't fall through.... Not only that we won't fall through but that we will thrive on that cloud of faith, draw new energy each time we need it, knowing that God is an unending source of hope no matter the trial.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, This Road We Traveled

“Anger had always been a secondary emotion anyway. That’s what her mother had once told her, that fury rode on a fast horse charging through a relationship, trampling right over loss, disappointment, and grief. And if one wasn’t careful, wrath crushed love too. “Pay attention to those forgotten feelings when you lose your temper, Jenny. Those are the trio of emotions that if not recognized and dealt with, will surely bring a soul down and make ire the driving force in your days. Wounds must grow new flesh.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Something Worth Doing: A Novel of an Early Suffragist

“The things nearby, not the things afar Not what we seem but what we are These are the things that make or break that give the heart its joy or ache.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Something Worth Doing: A Novel of an Early Suffragist

“And loneliness, well, that’s where your imagination comes in.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, This Road We Traveled

“Danger is everywhere, but fear, that's a choice we make.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, This Road We Traveled

“Writing something for publication caused a small conflict for her, which had kept her from submitting her poems. Her words in print would make her both a public and a private woman. She hadn’t yet shared that concern with anyone, including Ben. Writing had become a balm, different from being a reader.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Something Worth Doing: A Novel of an Early Suffragist

“Flowers remind us to put away fear, to stop our rushing and running and worrying about this and that, and for a moment have a piece of paradise right here on earth. God offers healing through flowers and brings us closer to Him.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Where Lilacs Still Bloom

“That everything that happens can be converted to good. We simply do not know the good of it, our world being so vast and wide and us but a small part in it”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, The Memory Weaver

“draw on to change the circumstances she found herself in. She’d build a ladder with courage as a rung. Maybe kindness would lift her higher too. It was the image she fell asleep pondering.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, This Road We Traveled

“She says she’s too old to fight and too fat to run, so she just has to rely on her good nature to survive.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, All Together in One Place

“Birth and death. It’s a woman’s lot to mark her world by those bookends.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Something Worth Doing: A Novel of an Early Suffragist

“You have to build yourself a ladder to take yourself out of sadness or grief or fear. Each rung lifting into better light."

....Imagination. She hadn't considered it a rung of a ladder, something she could draw on to change the circumstances she found herself in. She'd build a ladder with courage as a rung. Maybe kindness would lift her higher too.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick

“It's surprising what we allow ourselves to feel as 'living' and only later notice our suppression when we finally open up and tell ourselves the truth.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, A Sweetness to the Soul

“Good arrived with the bad. All had to be sorted. This was the way of life.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, Across the Crying Sands

“Ultimately we really only have the choice of trusting that God's with us, willing ourselves to walk with him as we walk this earth, learning from the roads we take.”
― Jane Kirkpatrick, This Road We Traveled