Susan Meissner > Quotes

“The person who completes your life is not so much the person who shares all the years of your existence, but rather the person who made your life worth living, no matter how long or short a time you were given to spend with them.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“Fear is worse than pain, I think. Pain is centralized, identifiable, and wanes as you wait. Fear is a heaviness you can’t wriggle out from under. You must simply find the will to stand with it and start walking. Fear does not start to fade until you take the step that you think you can’t.”
― Susan Meissner, Secrets of a Charmed Life

“When you only do what is expected of you, you never learn what you would've done had you chosen for yourself.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“Truth is a strange companion. It devastates one moment and enthralls the next. But it never deceives. And because of that, in the end, it comforts.”
― Susan Meissner, Secrets of a Charmed Life

“I used to think mercy meant showing kindness to someone who didn't deserve it, as if only the recipient defined the act. The girl in between has learned that mercy is defined by its giver. Our flaws are obvious, yet we are loved and able to love, if we choose, because there is that bit of the divine still smoldering in us.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“Home isn't a safe place where everything stays the same; it's a place where you are safe and loved despite nothing staying the same.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“Please don't let the unhappiness you knew in the past keep you from accepting happiness now.”
― Susan Meissner, Secrets of a Charmed Life

“what I hope readers will take away, is that a happy life is not made up of what you have dreamed of, chased after, and achieved, but rather whom you poured your life into, who poured their life into yours, and the difference you’ve made in the lives of others. Most of the dreams we pursue don’t have intrinsic worth, but people always do.”
― Susan Meissner, Secrets of a Charmed Life

“Do not choose to abandon love because you are afraid that it will crush you. Love is the only true constant in a fragile world.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“To love is not to be fragile; it is to be unlocked and open. And when something is open, other things can come in.”
― Susan Meissner, Secrets of a Charmed Life

“Everything beautiful has a story it wants to tell.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“I don't know very many people who can piece together eloquent prayers when their souls are wounded. Words don't come at those times, but tears do. I have always thought of my tears as prayers.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“Change always happens... We adjust to it. Somehow we figure out a way. We straighten what we can or learn how to like something a little crooked. That's how it is. Something breaks, you fix it as best you can. There's always a way to make something better, even if it means sweeping up the broken pieces and starting all over. That's how we keep moving, keep breathing, keep opening our eyes every morning, even when the only thing we know for sure is that we're still alive.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“There is just the simple truth that you must forgive yourself for only being able to make your own choices, and no one else’s.”
― Susan Meissner, Secrets of a Charmed Life

“Oh, but it's our tears that make us human, Isabel.”
― Susan Meissner, Secrets of a Charmed Life

“It was only after time had passed that a person was able to see whether she might have been able to bear the load she was sure had been too heavy.”
― Susan Meissner, Secrets of a Charmed Life

“It should always make us happy to say that loving someone and being loved by someone is worth whatever price paid.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“I hope [Willa] still thinks butterflies are beautiful. I think they are. We shouldn't think for a moment that just because their lives are short they shouldn't be here.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“I am saying, when you make a choice, even if it’s a bad one, you’ve played your hand. You cannot live your life as though you still held all your cards.”
― Susan Meissner, Secrets of a Charmed Life

“I don't think love is something you can start and stop by choosing. Our hearts tell us who we will love, and not the other way.”
― Susan Meissner, The Nature of Fragile Things

“there are no secrets to a charmed life. There is just the simple truth that you must forgive yourself for only being able to make your own choices, and no one else’s.”
― Susan Meissner, Secrets of a Charmed Life

“It is the nature of the earth to shift. It is the nature of fragile things to break. It is the nature of fire to burn.”
― Susan Meissner, The Nature of Fragile Things

“Ah, but what is history? Is it a record of what happened or rather our interpretation of what happened?” “I think it’s both,” I answer. “It has to be both. What good is remembering an event if you don’t remember how it made you feel. How it impacted others. How it made them feel. You would learn nothing and neither would anyone else.”
― Susan Meissner, Secrets of a Charmed Life

“Sages of the past would say we are—all of us—just imperfect people on a flawed planet who are trying to hold on to what is good and lovely and right.”
― Susan Meissner, Secrets of a Charmed Life

“Love was both the softest edge and the sharpest edge of what made life real.”
― Susan Meissner, A Fall of Marigolds

“I smiled. "I just wish... I wish I didn't judge people by what they have or don't have. I wish I could see people for you they are on the inside before I come to any conclusions."
My dad blinked slowly and then said... "Yes, that would be better than the other, but it still makes you their judge.”
― Susan Meissner, The Shape of Mercy

“You think you have a view of what's waiting for you just up the road, but then something happens, and you find out pretty quick you were looking at the wrong road.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven

“but if I know anything about time, it is that it stretches to walk with you when you grieve. The rest of the world may zoom past at breakneck speed, but when you are learning to live with loss, time slows to the pace of your breathing.”
― Susan Meissner, Secrets of a Charmed Life

“Our life is what our thoughts make it.” —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations”
― Susan Meissner, Secrets of a Charmed Life

“If people don't do their part to stop the spread of evil when they're asked to, it just gets stronger and then no one can stop it.”
― Susan Meissner, As Bright as Heaven