Brittany > Brittany's Quotes

“You are not supposed to be happy all the time. Life hurts and it's hard. Not because you're doing it wrong, but because it hurts for everybody. Don't avoid the pain. You need it. It's meant for you. Be still with it, let it come, let it go, let it leave you with the fuel you'll burn to get your work done on this earth.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton

“Blessed are those brave enough to make things awkward, for they wake us up and move us forward.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed

“Our major finding is that your history of relational health—your connectedness to family, community, and culture—is more predictive of your mental health than your history of adversity (see Figure 8). This is similar to the findings of other researchers looking at the power of positive relationships on health. Connectedness has the power to counterbalance adversity.”
― Bruce D. Perry, What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

“We elicit from the world what we project into the world; but what you project is based upon what happened to you as a child.”
― Bruce D. Perry, What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

“The experiences in the first years of life are disproportionately powerful in shaping how your brain organizes.”
― Oprah Winfrey, What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

“There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you'd been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you're suspended knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself.”
― Ann Patchett, The Dutch House

“I see the past as it actually was," Maeve said. She was looking at the trees.

"But we overlay the present onto the past. We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we're not seeing it as the people we were, we're seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered.”
― Ann Patchett, The Dutch House

“As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed as ignorant as you were at twenty-two, you'd always be twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

“Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“There is a moment, a cusp, when the sum of gathered experience is worn down by the details of living. We are never so wise as when we live in this moment.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“The library belongs to everyone. The library, Janet used to say, is one of only a few places in the world that one doesn't need to believe anything or buy anything to come inside.”
― Sally Hepworth, The Good Sister

“It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living, or get busy dying.”
― Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

“Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
― Stephen King, The Shawshank Redemption

“There is a lot in life that is difficult, and there is no getting around that. Good conversation will not take away the shock of death or heal the sting of heartbreak. But isolation and stigma will inevitably make that pain so much worse.”
― Anna Sale, Let's Talk About Hard Things

“When you’re at the beginning, don’t obsess about the middle, because the middle is going to look different once you get there.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“the most powerful form of reward is relational. Positive interactions with people are rewarding and regulating. Without connection to people who care for you, spend time with you, and support you, it is almost impossible to step away from any form of unhealthy reward and regulation.”
― Bruce D. Perry, What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing

“You don’t need scores of suitors. You need only one… if he’s the right one.”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“It’s fascinating. How so much of love is about who you are with someone.”
― Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation

“I’m saying,” Rachel replies, “that purpose matters more than contentment.”
― Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation

“Most of the time, everyone deserves more than one chance. We all do things we regret now and then. You just have to carry them with you.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it's often one of the great motivations for living. Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury. Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis. Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival. We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Nobody looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences. I was a child, which meant that I knew a dozen different ways of getting out of our property and into the lane, ways that would not involve walking down our drive.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“You don't pass or fail at being a person, dear.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“She really was pretty, for a grown-up person, but when you are seven, beauty is an abstraction, not an imperative. I wonder what I would have done if she had smiled at me like that now: whether I would have handed my mind or my heart or my identify to her for the asking, as my father did.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“I lean on each individual at different times and in different ways. Which is another thing worth recognizing about friendship. No one person, no one relationship will fulfill your every need. Not every friend can offer you safety or support on every day. Not every one can or will show up precisely when or how you need them to. And this is why it's good to continue always making room at your table, to keep yourself open to gathering more friends. You will never not need them, and you will never stop learning from them.”
― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times

“Life has shown me that strong friendships are most often the result of strong intentions. Your table needs to be deliberately built, deliberately populated, and deliberately tended to.”
― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times

“Friends will come and go, taking on more or less importance as you move through different phases of life. You may have a small group of friends, or just a few one-on-one friendships. All of that is okay. What matters most is the quality of your relationships. It’s good to be discerning about who you trust, who you bring close. With new relationships, I find myself quietly assessing whether I feel safe and whether, inside the context of a budding friendship, I feel seen and appreciated for who I am. With our friends, we are always looking for very simple reassurances that we matter, that our light is recognized and our voice is heard—and we owe our friends the same. I want to say, too, that it’s okay to step back from or downsize a difficult friendship. Sometimes we have to let certain friends go, or at least diminish our reliance on them.”
― Michelle Obama, The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times

“Grief, she told me once when she was talking about Charlie, was forever. An endless, winding river.”
― Jillian Cantor, Beautiful Little Fools