Anna Taylor > Anna's Quotes

“Maybe it was sacrilegious to admit that I felt closer to God inside that stadium than in church on Christmas Eve, but it was the truth, and I told myself it was no different from people who find their deepest spirituality in the woods or by the sea. Yes, God made those trees and that water, unlike the steel eyesore erected in 1938 and haphazardly added on to over the decades, but I still felt Him there - especially on that night, as I found myself praying for a season to remember. A national championship season.”
― Emily Giffin, The One & Only

“Oh, calamity!”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“So many things to be and not be; I am nothing, but I'm everything, yet I must, I must, I must.”
― Cecelia Ahern, Postscript

“Hockey isn't the past, it isn't yesterday, it's always next. The next line change, the next game, the next season, the next generation, the next magical moment when something we didn't think was possible becomes a miracle. The next chance to fly up from your seat and yell with joy. Next.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners

“When he first met her odd, detached parents he understood that Heather had grown up starved of love, and when you're starved of something you should receive in abundance, you never quite trust it.”
― Liane Moriarty, Nine Perfect Strangers

“Laws are black and white. The lives of women are a thousand shades of gray.”
― Jodi Picoult, A Spark of Light

“There was such art in the ordinary, it could leave you in tears.”
― Jodi Picoult, A Spark of Light

“Men often used that phrase: "drop some weight." They said it without shame or emotion, as if the weight were an object they could easily put down when they chose. Women said they needed to "lose weight," with their eyes down, as if the extra weight was part of them, a terrible sin they'd committed.”
― Liane Moriarty, Nine Perfect Strangers

“I mean a fat, ugly man can still be funny and lovable and successful,” continued Jane. “But it’s like it’s the most shameful thing for a woman to be.” “But you weren’t, you’re not—” began Madeline. “Yes, OK, but so what if I was!” interrupted Jane. “What if I was! That’s my point. What if I was a bit overweight and not especially pretty? Why is that so terrible? So disgusting? Why is that the end of the world?”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“Your religion should help you make the decision if you find yourself in that situation, but the policy should exist for you to have the right to make it in the first place.

When you say you can't do something because your religion forbids it, that's a good thing. When you say I can't do something because YOUR religion forbids it, that's a problem.”
― Jodi Picoult, A Spark of Light

“It was one thing to make a mistake; it was another thing to keep making it. I knew what happened when you let yourself get close to someone, when you started to believe they loved you: you'd be disappointed. Depend on someone, and you might as well admit you're going to be crushed, because when you really needed them, they wouldn't be there. Either that, or you'd confide in them and you added to their problems. All you ever really had was yourself, and that sort of sucked if you were less than reliable.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“When you love someone, you say their name different. Like it's safe inside your mouth.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“I think you can love a person too much.

You put someone up on a pedestal, and all of a sudden, from that perspective, you notice what's wrong - a hair out of place, a run in a stocking, a broken bone. You spend all your time and energy making it right, and all the while, you are falling apart yourself. You don't even realize what you look like, how far you've deteriorated, because you only have eyes for someone else.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here.”
― Jodi Picoult , Handle with Care

“Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“You can tell yourself that you would be willing to lose everything you have in order to get something you want. But it's a catch-22: all of those things you're willing to lose are what make you recognizable. Lose them, and you've lost yourself.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“Now, I was starting to see that what looks like garbage from one angle might be art from another. Maybe it did take a crisis to get to know yourself; maybe you needed to get whacked hard by life before you understood what you wanted out of it.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“Maybe that's what we do to the people we love: take shots in the dark and realize too late we've wounded the people we are trying to protect.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“The world would be a much easier place if, instead of handing over superstuffed syllables all the time, we just said what we really meant. Words got in the way. The things we felt the hardest - like what it was like to have a boy touch you as if you were made of light, or what it meant to be the only person in the room who wasn't noticed - weren't sentences; they were knots in the wood of our bodies, places where our blood flowed backward. If you asked me, not that anyone ever did, the only words worth saying were I'm sorry.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“When I had been really little and the wind blew like mad at night, I had trouble sleeping. My father would come in and tell me that the house wasn't made of straw or sticks, that it was brick, and like the little pigs knew, nothing could tear it down. Here's what the little pigs didn't realize: the big bad wolf was only the start of their problems. The biggest threat was already inside the house with them, and couldn't be seen. Not radon gas or carbon monoxide, but just the way three very different personalities fit inside one small space. Tell me that the slacker pig - the one who only mustered up straw - really could get along with the high-maintenance bricklayer pig. I think not. I'll bet you if that fairy tale went on another ten pages, all three of those pigs would have been at each other's throats, and that brick house would have exploded after all.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“But love wasn't about sacrifice, and it wasn't about falling short of someone's expectations. By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them. All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“Inveniam viam - I shall either find a way or make one.”
― Cecelia Ahern, Postscript

“I found a new and surprising strength inside of me, I found it at the bottom of a dark and lonely place, but I found it. And unfortunately, that’s where we find most of life’s treasures. After digging, toiling in the darkness and dire, we finally hit something concrete. I learned that rock bottom can actually be a springboard.”
― Cecelia Ahern, Postscript

“I must stop feeling so deeply but I must not be numb; I must move on but I must not forget; I must be happy but not reject sadness; I must embrace but not cling; I must deal with but not dwell on; I must confront but not attack; I must eliminate but not annihilate; I must be gentle with myself but I must be strong.”
― Cecelia Ahern, Postscript

“In one second, almost two and a half million emails are sent, the universe expands fifteen kilometres and thirty stars explode, a honey bee can flap its wings two hundred times, the fastest snail travels 1.3 centimetres, objects can fall sixteen feet, and ‘Will you marry me?’ can change a life.”
― Cecelia Ahern, Postscript

“Love can't cure a broken heart, but it can hold the two sides together while they heal.”
― Karen Hawkins, The Book Charmer

“A name was once seen as part of the soul, and now I understood its magic... It's why, as long as someone held your name on their lips, you were alive.”
― Jodi Picoult, The Book of Two Ways

“Life asked death, “Why do people love me but hate you?” Death responded, “Because you are a beautiful lie and I am a painful truth.” —Unknown”
― Jodi Picoult, The Book of Two Ways

“When you lose someone you love, there is a tear in the fabric of the universe. It's the scar you feel for, the flaw you can't stop seeing. It's the tender place that won't bear weight. It's a void.”
― Jodi Picoult, The Book of Two Ways

“We all have stories we tell ourselves, until we believe them to be true.”
― Jodi Picoult, The Book of Two Ways