Marie Bostwick > Quotes

“Between one breath and the next, your whole world can change. ”
― Marie Bostwick, A Single Thread

“I realized that I'd been comparing the inside of my life with the outside of everyone else's; measuring my own fortunes against the cheerful how-are-you-I'm-fine facade that people put on for each other.”
― Marie Bostwick

“Novels force you to think—to make your own conclusions about characters and themes, and decide if they’re valid or relevant or true or good, or the opposite, or maybe somewhere in between. My”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“Ignorance isn’t a chronic condition, unless you allow it to become one.”
― Marie Bostwick, Threading the Needle

“The book didn't solve the problem but it did put a name to it. Shining a light that helped women who felt isolated and powerless find one another - and their voices. That has been the very start of every revolution.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“That’s the thing I’ve learned about mountains: the joy you feel at scaling them is in direct proportion to how high and impassable the peak appears to be once you’re on the other side of it.”
― Marie Bostwick, Just In Time

“It's more like she left some of herself behind in the walls and the floors and the books, like there's something she wants to tell me.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Second Sister

“It's smart. It's what men do. Why do you think they join all those clubs —the Elks? The VFW? The Masons? Congress!" she cried. "To support one another, that's why. Why do you think they call them booster clubs? Because they're trying to boost each other over the wall or bend the rules in their favor, help the group.
If women stuck up for one another the way men do, this would be a very different world.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“death has a way of re-ranking your priorities and clearing your mind of debris. Maybe that is part of its purpose. On the other hand, maybe death is just death.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Second Sister

“Nearly every generation can point to an unanticipated event that divided time into before and after, a day after which the world would never be the same, when the markets crashed, or bombs dropped, or wars began, or towers fell.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“Every single thing we own owns us." Abigail from a thread of truth”
― Marie Bostwick

“But here’s the deal . . . Everything worthwhile takes longer than you think, trust me on this.”
― Marie Bostwick, Esme Cahill Fails Spectacularly

“You can work hard, and you should. Because even the most spectacular failure serves its purpose, setting you up for the success to come. And as long as you learn, no lesson is never a waste. But the stuff that really matters tends to come with a built-in timeline that’s usually a secret and almost always different than yours.”
― Marie Bostwick, Esme Cahill Fails Spectacularly

“there are countless good and right ways to be a woman and only two wrong. The first is to insist that your way is “the” way, the only way. The second is to buy into that nonsense and to spend your life limping along an aimless path in shoes that will never fit.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“Think of it this way, Maggie. If you let us give you a boost today, then someday maybe you’ll be in a position to do the same for someone else. We’ve got to start someplace. If we don’t, how is anything ever going to change?”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“The invisible fence of rules and mores that confined women to a small, carefully defined patch of human achievement impacted men as well, required them to carry the bulk of a family’s financial burden, even if it meant doing work they disliked.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“But it’s the battles you fight together that make two people one – the hardships, and failures, and occasional triumphs that cement your vows and teach you the meaning and practice of loving someone fully.”
― Marie Bostwick, Just In Time

“When your dreams turn to dust, maybe its time to vacuum".”
― Marie Bostwick, A Single Thread

“Look I'm not saying you have to agree with everything that's in here but we all know there's a problem. If we can't be honest about that, how is anything ever going to change?”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“Examining thoughts and ideas that can impact your life is the whole point of reading,”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“I count myself in nothing else so happy as in a soul remembering my good friends.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Second Sister

“Having faith in yourself,” Alice said, “believing you have as much right to be in the room as anybody else, is half the battle.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“If women stuck up for one another the way men do, this would be a very different world.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“We say that we mourn the dead, and there is some truth in that. We lament the flower frozen in full bloom, cut off at the moment of promise, or another long wilted, whose slow fading and drawn-out, painful diminishment cast a shadow over a vibrant and glorious past. And yet. Once the eyes are closed and the heart is stilled, we come to understand that the worst of the pain has passed. For them. The dead have no more use for pain, for memory or regret. Regret is for the living. And so when we stand at the bedside, the graveside, the casket, our mourning is less for the beloved departed than it is for ourselves. We mourn the missed opportunity, the word unspoken or spoken in haste, the hole in our lives and the unsettling of our souls, our own disappointments and the loss of innocence. We gaze upon the stillness that is unending and feel our self-importance crack and the myth of our immortality smash. We stare upon the face of death to see ourselves more clearly, to satisfy our curiosity, to make peace with the inescapable. We hold our breath, try to imagine what it would be like never to take another and what the departed know now that we don’t. We try to conjure what the life we have left would look like if such knowledge were ours. We try to imagine ourselves kind and expansive and giving, balanced and patient, more honest, more thankful, more peaceful, content with what we have, mindless of what we have not. We imagine ourselves happy. For a moment, we believe we can be. And then, because we can’t help ourselves, we breathe and, breathing, are reminded of the many other things we cannot help. The faith of a moment fades and hope is replaced by the intimate knowledge of our imperfections. Lonely, weeping, we stand with our feet anchored to the ground, watching our better angels fly above us and beyond us to time out of mind, and we mourn.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Second Sister

“One thing I know from experience," she said, "it's always a lot easier to be a conqueror if you don't try to go it alone. You didn't see Napoleon riding off to battle with just himself and his trusty sword. He brought in some backup.”
― Marie Bostwick, A Single Thread

“Books sprung from an author’s imagination can be just as meaningful as those based on facts, figures, and events, or even more meaningful. Novels force you to think—to make your own conclusions about characters and themes, and decide if they’re valid or relevant or true or good, or the opposite, or maybe somewhere in between. My personal preference is for in between. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who was all one thing or the other, have you? Most people are a walking bundle of contradictions.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“I wouldn’t want to live there, but Washington was a nice place to visit, and that’s what I intended to do: see every single monument and museum, just like the rest of the tourists, marveling at our history and taking pride in the miracle of our democracy, just like the rest of my countrymen. I couldn’t wait.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Second Sister

“I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. None of us does. That’s why we get up and go on because, until forever comes, you can’t stay where you are.”
― Marie Bostwick, Just in Time

“Life has a way of steering you toward the path you’re meant to take, whether you meant to take it or not.”
― Marie Bostwick, Esme Cahill Fails Spectacularly