Barbara Davis > Quotes

“Maybe it wasn’t about needing them. People hold on to all kinds of things, silly things, even broken things, because of the memories attached to them.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“There was certainly plenty in her own past that she was reluctant to look at. Because looking made it real.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“And so I sit on the dunes in my carefully mismatched clothes, hour after hour, day after day, frozen in my looking back. 'Do not look behind you...lest you be swept away.' That is what scripture say. Only there is nowhere for me to look but back. No future. No redemption. Like Lot's wife, I am turned to salt, my tired eyes trained on the blue-gray horizon, where sea meets sky, where my yesterday's met my tomorrows, a ragtag eccentric, watching and waiting for something that never comes.”
― Barbara Davis

“then, she knew better than most that the face a person chose to show the world wasn’t always the real one. Everyone had a story. Not everyone wanted to share.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“don’t live a smaller life than you deserve.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“Easier isn’t always best.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“No,” Missy said firmly. “It isn’t. It’s all the doors we keep shut. It’s the places we won’t let ourselves go, the things we won’t let ourselves have or be, because we don’t think we’re good enough or strong enough for more. I know because that used to be me. And then I became a single parent, and I realized I didn’t have time for nevers.” She paused, her smile thin and tremulous. “All I’m saying is don’t live a smaller life than you deserve.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“People like to dig up the bodies, anguish over mistakes. What’s the point? The water’s poisoned. There’s no cleaning it up after it’s done. The only thing you can do is walk away—and set fire to your bridges.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“I’ve never been good at letting people in, but somehow you’re here, and I’m glad.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“At ten, she learned that no address was permanent, at twelve, that no promise was sacred, and at sixteen, that there was no such thing as safe.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“You’re sure about this?” “No. But I’m doing it anyway. I have to.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“I’m not cut out for happy. Busy is going to have to do.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“Her eyes were open and glazed, a piercing shade of violet with fixed, bottomless pupils.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“And I don’t think you’re helpless. But it’s okay to let someone help you once in a while.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“She wanted to go back, to clean it all up, to rewrite her story without all the dark parts, to unknow the things she knew, to unsee the things she’d seen, to live without her memories, her shame, her regret. And maybe that was a kind of atonement, after all. But none of those things were possible.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“I think I could sit here all night looking out over this lake. It’s so peaceful, like a church without walls.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“She said the word never represents all the doors we keep closed, that when we say never we close ourselves off from the hope that things can ever be different.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“Integrity isn’t something you have in some parts of your life and not in others. You either have it, or you don’t.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“I’ve been having nightmares,” she said quietly. “Basically the same dream for months now. I’m exhausted.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“But if she was being honest—and it was well past time for that—she had to acknowledge that the empty places in her life were of her own making.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“It just gets old, you know? Always defending your choices. No one ever imagines your reasons might be well thought out, that it might actually be the least selfish choice you'll ever make. Not all of us believe our lives are meaningless unless we reproduce.”
― Barbara Davis

“Lynn gave him a half-hearted shrug.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“I think I was numb,” she said at last. “Not happy. Not unhappy. There were signs, I suppose, that it wasn’t Shangri-la, but there wasn’t any one thing. It was gradual, you know? Insidious. It wasn’t until he was gone that I realized I’d been married to someone I barely knew. I was holding on so tightly I never realized how much we’d both changed. Still, it wasn’t enough to leave. At least I didn’t think it was.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“I don’t want to be angry anymore, Belle. I have been for so long. Because I thought it was a way to insulate myself from the memories. It never worked, though. It just made me too proud to do what I should have a long time ago.”
― Barbara davis

“But belonging to someone and giving yourself to them were two very different things. One formed out of need, a tidy arrangement mutually beneficial to both parties, while the other involved laying yourself bare—something she’d never been very good at.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“I’m not saying don’t do it. I’m just saying don’t pretend it’s not a big deal when it obviously is.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“Sometimes you get a feeling about someone the minute you meet them. You just know who they are, and what they're all about.”
― Barbara Davis

“I know what it looks like when someone’s pushing the whole world away and how much you can lose while you’re doing it.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“It was hard to imagine feeling more out of place than she did at that moment.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes

“Men like Stephen don’t cheat because they’re missing something at home, Christy-Lynn. They cheat because they’re missing something inside, so they take what they want and make it theirs, because they need to fill up all that empty space.”
― Barbara Davis, When Never Comes