You Better Be Lightning Quotes

“I know most people try hard
to do good and find out too late
they should have tried softer.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“Regret is a time machine to the past.
Worry is a time machine to the future.
Gratitude is a time machine to the present.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“Good Grief
Let your
heart break

so your spirit
doesn't.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“Silence rides shotgun
wherever hate goes.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“If we never deny
the inevitable end
of the story,
we will write it
more beautiful
while we're alive.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“Is my attention on loving, or is my attention on who isn’t loving me?”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“I will refuse to call it heaven
if the people I love
(who put me through hell)

aren't there.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“If every heart-worthy novelist weeps for
days before killing off a beloved character,
god must have spent centuries sobbing be-
fore pressing a pen to the page of this year.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“NO SUCH THING AS THE INNOCENT BYSTANDER Silence rides shotgun wherever hate goes.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“Bitterness is the easiest way
to leave this world having had only
a near-life experience.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“Even on my worst days, my scars are the backroads where kids sneak out their windows and drive through the night to hear poetry.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“because where I come from
beauty is in the eye of anyone who sees
what's missing but can't stop pointing
to what's still there.
If there's no definition of love yet --
I think that's a good one.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“If we never deny the inevitable end of the story, we will write it more beautiful while we’re alive.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“Regret is a time machine to the past. Worry is a time machine to the future. Gratitude is a time machine to the present.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“I love myself is often spelled g-o-o-d-b-y-e”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“I know most people try hard to do good and find out too late they should have tried softer.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“Tore the caution tape off my life and let everything touch it:”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“The moon rising over the continental divide.
My girlfriend and I thought it was a car
driving off a cliff, and suddenly nothing
in the world was dying. You ever felt that?
A split second when nothing in the world is dying?
888 goosebumps.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“You've walked on water
so many times you know grace
is super, super slippery.
There's literally nothing
anyone is more likely
to fall from.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“If your wounds are still open, trust
they are doors to an answer,
and walk through.
What if we don't have to be healed
to be whole?”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“[...] Friend, you are
who taught me that a difficult life is not less
worth living than a gentle one. Joy is just easier
to carry than sorrow, and you could lift a city
from how long you've spent holding
what's been nearly impossible to hold.
This world needs those who know
how to do that. Those who can find
a tunnel with no light at the end
of it and hold it up like a telescope
to show that the darkness contains
many truths that can bring the light
to its knees. Grief astronomer,
adjust the lens, look close. Tell us
what you see.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“[...] but love will still throw me over her shoulder and carry me up
every story I ever told myself so I can see what's true,
and what's true is I can't always tell the difference between my gifts and my tragedies. [...]
What locked my voice box is also what taught me
how to carve keys from poetry, and now my words
are so good at coming to my own rescue,
fire trucks pull over to let my voice through.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“I am so much
of who I dreamed I'd be
when I grew up, and what
does the boy you once were
think of the man you became?”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“None of these girls are shocked by the hurt that hunts them --
they expect the blade of this life
to keep cutting and ask it to whittle
them into someone too sharp to touch.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“For years to come, nothing will have the potential
to devastate me more than listening to a child try
to make her life sound easier than it is.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“Healing was learning
no one has ever laid a fingerprint
on the part of me that's infinite.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“To make up for lost time, you need only to put down the grudge you are holding so you can pick up the phone and say, How many days did we need each other at the same time without knowing it? Bitterness is the easiest way to leave this world having had only a near-life experience.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“I had the youngest soul in the universe. I was so brand new I thought reincarnation was a flower I would wear on my wrist”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“I’ve had many jobs before this one and will have many after, but this is where I learn one of the most vital lessons: if your own story is one you aren’t sure you can survive, remove whatever sharpness you can from another person’s life.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning

“month into the job, I can’t look at any of the girls without seeing my baby sister’s face the first time someone hurt her on purpose. It wasn’t my sister’s grief so much as her shock that stuck with me. None of these girls are shocked by the hurt that hunts them— they expect the blade of this life to keep cutting and ask it to whittle them into someone too sharp to touch.”
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightning