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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“Acquaintances abound, but true friendships are rare and worth waiting for.”
― 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

“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

“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

“Margaret liked that her daughter knew her own mind and wasn’t afraid to speak it. It was an underappreciated quality in women, one that often faded with age.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“She was tired of stale conversations, the company of generic women who made her feel like she had to swallow her opinions and camouflage her personality.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

“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

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

“the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”
― 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

“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

“From those to whom much has been given, much is expected.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Book Club for Troublesome Women

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

“If God wants you to be somewhere or do something, He'll supply everything you need at the moment you need it. And not one moment before. Never forget, Celia, God is in the business of Just In Time inventory.”
― Marie Bostwick, The Restoration of Celia Fairchild

“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

“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

“Do you know why money matters? Because it buys power. Power to influence outcomes and break people, power to bend the world to your will. And who has the money? The power? The control? “Men. Sure, every now and again, some clever girl manages to outlive her male relatives and get her hands on the inheritance, but the rest of us?” She shook her head. “We’ve got no choice but to dance to their tune, use our looks and wiles to convince those bastards to toss a few crumbs our direction.”
― 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

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