Barbara O'Neal > Quotes

“it’s not about comparison, as my counselor used to say. My pain is my pain.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“There are seasons of darkness, yes? Loss and sadness all around.” He tightens his grip. “But if you are patient, the circle turns, and then there is happiness all around, everything good, everyone happy.” He flings a hand out, palm up, as if scattering glitter. “My friend, he just forgot that happiness is part of living too.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“Your quest is powerful. You needn’t apologize for the space it takes.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“Resistance will break you. Kill you. The only way to survive is to let go.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“That isn’t who you are. You’re afraid. And you cannot have a life of great meaning if you make decisions out of fear.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“A girl without a mother who protects her is a girl at the mercy of the world.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“When I saw you, I recognized you, like I’ve been waiting, all this time, for you to show up. And there you were.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“"I always read everything when I was a kid-and I do mean everything, from Nancy Drew to Dickens to my dad's John D. MacDonald-but then I went to regular school and the English teachers started telling me to read 'real' books, so I tried. And you know, I kinda went off reading for a while. I had already been reading literary novels and the classics mixed in with whatever else, but-" She waved a hand. "So I went back to reading whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to-reading had been my greatest pleasure in all the world. I mean I never really watched all that much television, because we were moving around, never really had solid digs until I was thirteen, so reading was everything.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Secret of Everything

“Every girl needs a mother who protects her with a savage fury.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“It was as if their feet ran on parallel train tracks and pulled in at the same stations at the same time, over and over.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Secret of Everything

“He sat across from her and took her small hands in his own. "Babe, you don't have to carry the world. I've got it, okay?”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Secret of Everything

“There are seasons of darkness, yes? Loss and sadness all around.” He tightens his grip. “But if you are patient, the circle turns, and then there is happiness all around, everything good, everyone happy.” He flings a hand out, palm up, as if scattering glitter.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“I’ve carried a torch of hatred for my mother for so long now that it’s hard to even see beyond the straw woman I’ve made of her.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“My gift has always been an ability to be happy. It sounds small until you live in the world for a while.”
― Barbara O'Neal, Write My Name Across the Sky

“Not everything is a disaster waiting to happen,”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“I don’t bring podcasts or music with me. I want to hear whatever the earth has to tell me.”
― Barbara O'Neal, This Place of Wonder

“That is a little happy. Not big, not the kind that fills you up and makes you want to laugh.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“This happens all the time. Anyone who has lost somebody they love has experienced it—the head in the crowd on a busy street, the person at the grocery store who moves just like her. The rush to catch up, so relieved that she is actually still alive . . . Only to be crushed when the imposter turns around and the face is wrong. The eyes. The lips.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“Paris”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“Life is always a mixed bag.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“Maybe I don’t have to choose between Dylan as a villain and Dylan as my beloved hero. Maybe he was both. Maybe Josie was—is—both too. Heroine and villain. Maybe we all are.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“I think you can be both an introvert and an extrovert at the same time. Be a loner and also like people. You can be more than one thing.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“So what? So what if it ends? What if he dies? What if the world ends? What if? Would you really trade having this . . . joy . . . right now for some awful thing that might not even happen?” “I know what you’re saying, but it’s not really that easy, is it?” “It’s only harder if you insist. Don’t take things away from yourself before you even get to enjoy them.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Starfish Sisters

“But it’s not about comparison, as my counselor used to say. My pain is my pain.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“A lifetime of secrets and lies later, I drive through the dark back to my neighborhood.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“Your . . . ?” “My soul mate,” I finish, and a welter of tears swells in my eyes. I have to swallow hard to control them. “Like we’ve known each other always.” “In Spanish, we say alma gemela. Soul twin.” The words sting the raw space of my heart.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“Damn, Josie. How did you get so bad?” She lets go of a sad, short laugh. “A day at a time.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“Love is not always destructive,” he says quietly, and slides a finger up my shin. “Sometimes love creates.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids

“Life had washed me here on this strange errand. Maybe the best thing to do was to just let it show me what it had in mind.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“We drank hot chocolate and sat on the beach in our finery, and we were mermaids with our mermaid mother.”
― Barbara O'Neal, When We Believed in Mermaids