Charles Martin > Quotes

“Never judge someone by their relatives.”
― Charles Martin, Chasing Fireflies

“Once a heart breaks…it doesn’t just grow back. It’s not a lizard’s tail. It’s more like a huge stained glass that shattered into a million pieces, and it’s not going back together. Least not the way it was. You can mush it all into one piece, but that doesn’t make it a window. That makes it a pile of broken colored glass. Shattered hearts don’t mend and they don’t heal. They just don’t work that way.”
― Charles Martin, The Mountain Between Us

“Reese, your books might not tell you this, so I will. Every heart has two parts, the part that pumps and the part that loves. If you’re going to spend your life fixing broken hearts, then learn about both. You can’t just fix one with no concern for the other. ”
― Charles Martin

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but if you want to hurt someone...way down deep, use words.”
― Charles Martin, The Mountain Between Us

“Love has its own communication. It's the language of the heart, while it has never been transcribed, has no alphabet, and can't be heard or spoken by voice, it is used by every human on the planet. It is written on our souls, scripted by the finger of God, and we can hear, understand, and speak it with perfection long before we open our eyes for the first time.”
― Charles Martin, Maggie

“He picked up one of Lorna's roses and set it in my lap. "Here." I picked it up and smelled it. He poked me in the shoulder. "See what I mean? Thorns don't stop you from sniffing. Or putting them in a vase on the kitchen table. You work around them.... Cause the rose is worth it... Think what you'd miss.”
― Charles Martin, Chasing Fireflies

“the mountain between us is one i cannot climb .”
― charles martin , The Mountain Between Us

“Forgiveness is a tough thing. Both in the offering…and the accepting.”
― Charles Martin, The Mountain Between Us

“He thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow.”
― Charles Martin, Chasing Fireflies

“love is worth doing. No matter how much it hurts.”
― Charles Martin, The Mountain Between Us

“Well...letting the cat out of the bag is a lot easier than putting it in.”
― Charles Martin, Chasing Fireflies

“You take the bad with the good, Rise up through it. Live in the mist of it. It's the bad that lets you know ho good the good really is. Don't let the bad leave you thinking like there ain't any good. There is, and lots of it, too. ”
― Charles Martin, Chasing Fireflies

“I had this dream that my life was a rolling canvas. Everyday it rolled off the sheet, bleached white, into the beach of my life. Come sunup, I'd begin to paint it with my thoughts and actions. My breathing, my living, and my dying. Some days the pictures pleased me, maybe pleased others, pleased God himself, but some days, some months, even some years, they didn't, and I didn't ever want to look at them again. But the thing is this . . . every day, no matter what I'd painted the day before, I got a new canvas, washed white. 'Cause each night the tide rolled in, scrubbed it clean, and receded, taking it's stains with it. And my dreams . . . I just stood on the beach and watched all that stuff wash out to sea.- Nothing more than ripples in the water. No canvas is ever stained clean through. Not one.”
― Charles Martin, Chasing Fireflies

“People marvel at the genius of Mozart because he supposedly wrote "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" at the age of three and composed his first symphony at the age of twelve. And yes, of course he was a genius, but another way to look at it is that he just discovered early what it was God made him to do. That's all. For some reason, God gave him a little extra, or a little something different, and Mozart found out what that was and then got a head start on using it. Of course he was brilliant, but that's not the point. The point is he knew, and then he got to work.”
― Charles Martin, When Crickets Cry

“We're all fallen people in a fallen world.

Where does a man find healing amid so many broken places? How does he find love in the ruins and vine-wrapped shattered pieces of his own soul?

Because love's springing up through the rocks.”
― Charles Martin, Wrapped in Rain

“loving somebody gets better the more you do it.”
― Charles Martin, The Mountain Between Us

“You can put your boots in the oven, but that doesn't make them biscuits. - You can say whatever you want about something, but that doesn't change what it is.”
― Charles Martin, Chasing Fireflies

“I’m one half of a two-piece puzzle.”
― Charles Martin, The Mountain Between Us

“I think when two people really love each other...way down deep...like where the souls sleep and dreams happen, where pain can't live 'cause there's nothing for it to feed on...then a wedding is a bleeding together of those two souls. Like two rivers running together. All that water becoming the same water. Mine did that.”
― Charles Martin, The Mountain Between Us

“...forgive your enemies...it messes with their heads.”
― Charles Martin, Chasing Fireflies

“The library was magical because every time I walked through the door, there were literally thousands of voices ready and willing to have a conversation with me. I walked through the door, stared at all those stacks and bindings, and whispered, "Tell me a story.”
― Charles Martin, Unwritten

“this…living with a broken heart is living half dead, and that doesn’t mean you’re half alive. It means you’re half dead. And…that’s no way to live.”
― Charles Martin, The Mountain Between Us

“Marry the man who’s going to walk with you through the next fifty or sixty years. Open doors, hold your hand, make your coffee, rub lotion on the cracks of your feet, put you up on a pedestal where you belong. Is he marrying your face and your bottle-blond hair, or will he love you when you look like whoever you’re going to look like in fifty years?”
― Charles Martin, The Mountain Between Us

“Termite, you're young, and I'm not sure if you're going to understand what I'm about to say, but here's the nugget: Without the heart, nothing else matters. She could be the Goddess of Love, you could have all the mind-blowing sex you could physically handle, but when the shooting is over, and you're starting to think about getting a bite to eat, smoking a cigarette, or what you do with her now, you're just lying in bed with a woman who means little more to you than the remote control for your TV. Love is not tool; neither is a woman's heart. What I'm talking about, you won't find in that magazine."

"How would you know? You just said you've only loved one woman. I think you need to test-drive a few cars before you buy one."

"You can buy that lie if you want, but if you're working for a bank, you don't study the counterfeit to know the real thing. You study the real thing to know the counterfeit."

Reese talking to Termite, pg. 109-110”
― Charles Martin, When Crickets Cry

“If your knuckles are bloodier than your knees,then you're fighting the wrong battle.”
― Charles Martin, Wrapped in Rain

“The river never changes. it may alter it's path a bit, but it never changes. It's us who change. We come back here and we're are different. Not it."

Form can't be extracted from the essence like some broth reduction."

This river's taught me a good bit. Probably why I don't leave here. It winds, weaves, snakes around. Rarely goes the same twice. But, in the end, it always ends up in the same place and the gift is never the same." ..."it's the journey that matters.”
― Charles Martin, Where the River Ends

“If anything in the universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart"...It derives no benefit from the blood it pumps making it the most unselfish of organs...it is also the most courageous and faithful." (124, 126) - Reese”
― Charles Martin, When Crickets Cry

“I'm not leaving you. Not going it alone. Not looking at the memory of you everytime I close my eyes.”
― Charles Martin, The Mountain Between Us

“...but maybe life is like that - you never know when something that's been hidden is going to rise up and bite you, or glow with a golden hue.”
― Charles Martin, When Crickets Cry

“Scientists say that these things evolved this way over millions of years." He shook his head. "That's a bunch of bunk. I don't think an animal can just all-of-a-sudden decide it wants to make light grow out it's butt. What kind of nonsense is that? Animals don't make light." He pointed to the stars. "God does that. I don't know why or how, but I'm pretty sure it's not chance. It's not some haphazard thing he does in his spare time."

He looked at me, and his expression changed from one of wonder to seriousness, to absolute convicton. "Chase, I don't believe in chance." He held up the jar. "This is not chance, neither are the stars."....."And neither are you. So, if your mind is telling you that God slipped up and might have made one giant mistake when it comes to you, you remember the firefly's butt.”
― Charles Martin, Chasing Fireflies