Barbara Davis > Quotes

“We read not to escape life but to learn how to live it more deeply and richly, to experience the world through the eyes of the other.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“In the happiest times of my life, I have reached for my books. In the saddest times of my life, my books have reached back.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“To lose oneself in the pages of a book is often to find oneself. —Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“Books are feelings,” he replied simply. “They exist to make us feel. To connect us to what’s inside, sometimes to things we don’t even know are there.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“Books may be likened to the people who come into our lives. Some will become precious to us; others will be set aside. The key is to discern which is which.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“There is nothing quite so alive as a book that has been well loved. —Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“The number of lives we are capable of living is limited only by the number of books we choose to read. —Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“There is a grief worse than death. It is the grief of a life half-lived. Not because you don’t know what could have been—but because you do. You realize too late that it was there for the taking—right there in your hands—and you let it slip away. Because you let something—or someone—keep you apart.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“There’s nothing more personal than a book, especially one that’s become an important part of someone’s life.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“it is never a kindness to allow a lie to stand, however hard the pursuit of the truth may be. In the end, light is the only thing that has ever chased away darkness—the only thing that ever will. Seek truth in all things,”
― Barbara Davis, The Last of the Moon Girls

“people’s lives were defined not by the scars they acquired but by what lay on the other side of those scars, by what’s done with the life they have left.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“The number of lives we are capable of living is limited only by the number of books we choose to read.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“I understand that part, not wanting the world to see your sadness. You think you’re the only one, singled out by fate to suffer. You’re not, of course, but it feels that way. The rest of the world is moving forward, living their lives and dreaming their dreams, while you’re frozen, forever suspended in that terrible moment when your world stopped turning and the ground suddenly fell away. You exist in a void, where everything’s empty and endlessly dark, until little by little the light becomes unbearable.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“Without a reader, a book was a blank slate, an object with no breath or pulse of its own. But once a book became part of someone’s world, it came to life, with a past and a present—and, if properly cared for, a future.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“Like people, it is the books with the most scars that have lived the fullest lies. Faded, creased, dusty, broken. These have the best stories to tell, the wisest counsel to offer.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“We plan our lives like we’re in charge, lay all the pieces end to end like we think they should go, and then zing! Something happens we never saw coming, and we end up somewhere else. Sometimes it’s right back where we started.”
― Barbara Davis, The Last of the Moon Girls

“But if something tragic happened in a book, you could just close it and choose a new one, unlike real life, where events often played out without the protagonist’s consent.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“Books are rib and spine, blood and ink, the stuff of dreams dreamed and lives lived. One page, one day, one journey at a time. —Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“Time, you see, is the enemy, a trap of our own making. The past is lost forever, a wasteland of all that could have been and never was, while the future stretches endlessly before us, always an hourglass’s worth of sand beyond our reach. Today, then, is what we have left—the here and the now—to make our wishes, and to fight for the life we want.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“the truth is incapable of real harm. It is we who do harm, when we refuse to face what is real, because it’s uncomfortable or inconvenient.”
― Barbara Davis, The Last of the Moon Girls

“Life gives us exactly what we need, even what we want, but we’re afraid to grab it and hold on with both hands. We let go when the holding gets hard. We blame when we should forgive.” She paused for the tiniest beat, locking eyes with her son. “And we run when we should stand our ground. Because we don’t understand that we don’t just get the life we wish for. We get the life we fight for.”
― Barbara Davis, The Wishing Tide

“Like humans, books experienced their share of heartache—and like humans, they remembered.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“Every woman is a puzzle,” I say finally. “Some harder to solve than others. But then, I’ve found it’s the difficult ones who are most worth the effort.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“Books are feelings,” he replied simply. “They exist to make us feel. To connect us to what’s inside, sometimes to things we don’t even know are there. It only makes sense that some of what we feel when we’re reading would . . . rub off.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“She understood the need to retreat behind a book, to create a physical barrier between you and the world. She’d been doing it for years, seeking refuge in other people’s stories.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“You have been the capital error of my life, the one regret for which there can be no absolution, no peace. For you or for me.”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“To read a book is to take a journey, to travel into a vast unknown, to hear the voices of angels both living and dead. —Ashlyn Greer, The Care & Feeding of Old Books”
― Barbara Davis, The Echo of Old Books

“There are times for holding on in this life and times for letting go. You must learn to know the difference. —Esmée Roussel, the Dress Witch”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“In France we say, tu me manques. It means ‘you are missing from me.’ Not I miss you—the way Americans say it—but you are missing from me. The part of you that is a part of me . . . is gone. This is how it is for her. There’s a void in her life where you used to be, and she doesn’t know how to fill it.” Rory”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings

“We’re all a collection of our stories, chérie. Our joys and sorrows. Our loves and losses. That is who we are, a tally of all our agonies and ecstasies. Sometimes the agonies leave a mark, like a bruise on the soul. We do our best to hide them from the world, and from ourselves too. Because we’re afraid of being fragile. Of being damaged. That’s what makes us kindred spirits, Rory—our bruises.”
― Barbara Davis, The Keeper of Happy Endings