Joan Zinderman > Joan's Quotes

“At some point as adults we cease to be our parents' children and we become our children's parents instead.”
― William Landay, Defending Jacob

“The interior of a teenager’s mind is an endless war between Stupid and Clever.”
― William Landay, Defending Jacob

“An emotion is a thought, yes, an idea, but it is also a sensation, an ache in your body. Desire, love, hate, fear, repulsion - you feel these things in your muscle and bones, not just in your mind.”
― William Landay, Defending Jacob

“Damage hardens us all. It will harden you too, when it finds you—and it will find you”
― William Landay, Defending Jacob

“But sometimes you can't figure everything out because you can't ever really understand other people. You can't understand why they do what they do. You just have to accept a little mystery, Ben. People are mysterious, the world is mysterious. You can't know everything. You're not supposed to. This isn't a history book. It's just the world. It's a messy place.”
― William Landay, Mission Flats: A Novel

“no one worth knowing can be quite known, no one worth possessing can be quite possessed”
― William Landay, Defending Jacob

“Predisposition is not predestination.”
― William Landay, Defending Jacob

“We move through time like a man in a rowboat, looking back even as we move forward.”
― William Landay, Mission Flats: A Novel

“...don't worry about how things look. People are going to think whatever they think. To hell with 'em. You can't worry about it.”
― William Landay, Defending Jacob

“There is no absolute beginning to any story, after all. There is only the moment you begin watching.”
― William Landay, Mission Flats: A Novel

“Every father knows the disconcerting when you see your child as a weird, distorted double of yourself. It is as if for a moment your identities overlap. You see an idea, a conception of your boyish inner self...made real and flesh.
He is you restarted, rewound; at the same time he is as foreign and unknowable as any other person.”
― William Landay, Defending Jacob

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

“If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but
for the heart to conquer it.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranath Tagore

“Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.”
― Rabindranath Tagore