Best 57 quotes of Christina Baker Kline on MyQuotes

And so it is that you learn how to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside.

Do you believe in spirits? Or ghosts?...Yes, I do. I believe in ghosts....They're the ones who haunt us. The ones who have left us behind." "Vivian has come back to the idea that the people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our ordinary moments. They're with us in the grocery store, as we turn the corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles." "The things that matter stay with you, seep into your skin.

I have a lot of empathy for women who fit their writing into the crevices of their too-busy lives, as I once did.

I know too much; I've seen people at their worst, at their most desperate and selfish, and this knowledge makes me wary. So I am learning to pretend, to smile, to nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside.

I learned long ago that loss is not only probable but inevitable. I know what it means to lose everything, to let go of one life and find another. And now I feel, with a strange, deep certainty, that it must be my lot in life to be taught that lesson over and over again.

I like the assumption that everyone is trying his best, and we should all just be kind to each other.

I love you," he writes again and again. "I can't bear to live without you. I'm counting the minutes until I see you." The words he uses are the idioms of popular songs and poems in the newspaper. And mine to him are no less cliched. I puzzle over the onionskin, trying to spill my heart onto the page. But I can only come up with the same words, in the same order, and hope the depth of feeling beneath them gives them weight and substance. I love you. I miss you. Be careful. Be safe.

In my teens I fancied myself an artist; I hung out with the eccentric art teacher at my high school, painted still lifes and portraits and landscapes in watercolor and acrylics, took private lessons, won some blue ribbons for my earnest renderings. My lack of talent did little to dampen my enthusiasm. In college I thought I'd continue, but, like Salieri, I quickly realized that while I had the ability to appreciate art, I wasn't actually very good.

I've come to think that's what heaven is- a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on.

One of the wonderful things about being a writer is that you're constantly dredging up some arcane knowledge or long-forgotten experience, rediscovering old passions and interests.

She knows too well what it's like to tamp down your natural inclinations, to force a smile when you feel numb....The expression of emotion does not come naturally, so yo learn to fake it. To pretend. To display an empathy you don't really feel. And so it is that you learn to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside.

So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason - to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?

When something terrible happens, a lifetime of small events and unremarkable decisions, of unresolved anger, and unexplored fears begins to play itself out in ways you least expect. You've been going along from one day to the next, not realizing that all those disparate words and gestures were adding up to something, a conclusion, you didn't anticipate. And later, when you begin to retrace your steps you see that you will need to reach back further than you could have imagined, beyond words and thoughts and even dreams, perhaps to make sense of what happened.

And I know, with the newfuond clarity of being in a relationship myself, that my own parents were never happy together, and probably never would have been, whatever the circumstances

As with Dutchy and Carmine on the train, this little cluster of women has become a kind of family to me. Like an abandoned foal that nestles against cows in the barnyard, maybe I just need to feel the warmth of belonging. And if I'm not going to find that with the Byrnes, I will find it, however partial and illusory, with the women in the sewing room.

Before we leave the gravesite, Mary sings Mother's favorite gospel hymn ... Mary's lovely voice rises and lingers in the air, and by the end of the song most of us are crying. I am too, though I still don't know what those stars are meant to represent. My mistake, I suppose, is in thinking they should mean something.

Do our natures dictate the choices we make, I wonder, or do we choose to live a certain way because of circumstances beyond our control?

Fairy tales end happily ever after because children crave certainly and resolution; they need to know how things turn out. But if my experiences in the past three months have shown me anything, it's that I am comfortable living with more questions than answers. My own story will always be a work in progress.

He reaches over and touches my necklace. "You still have it. That gives me faith." "Faith in what?" "God, I suppose. No, I don't know. Survival.

I am acutely aware that like a slip of paper in the wind, something in his nature eludes my grasp.

... I am halfway between two worlds, the known and the unknown. I feel as transparent as the wind, as if my spirit is hovering in the sky, waiting to land. I am driving toward a future I can't see, leaving behind a past that already feels distant. Nothing is clear - and yet the trees are sharp against the sky; I can see the hard outlines of everything.

I ... am left with the lingering feeling that the places we go in our minds to find comfort have little to do with where our bodies go.

I couldn't have imagined how much more there was to lose.

If you really want to know me, I said, we'll have to start with the witches.

If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead.

I get the sense that my abandonment, and the circumstances that brought me to them, matter little to them, compared to the need I might fill in their lives. - (Niamh/Dorothy)

I'll play your fucking game. But I don't have to play by your rules.

I remember her words to me when I left school: Your mind will be your comfort. It is, sometimes. And sometimes it isn't.

I think about all the ways I’ve been perceived by others over the years: as a burden, a dutiful daughter, a girlfriend, a spiteful wretch, an invalid… This is my letter to the World that never wrote to Me. “You showed what no one else could see,” I tell him. He squeezes my shoulder. Both of us are silent, looking at the painting. There she is, that girl, on a planet of grass. Her wants are simple: to tilt her face to the sun and feel its warmth. To clutch the earth beneath her fingers. To escape from and return to the house she was born in. To see her life from a distance, as clear as a photograph, as mysterious as a fairy tale. This is a girl who has lived through broken dreams and promises. Still lives. Will always live on that hillside, at the center of a world that unfolds all the way to the edges of the canvas. Her people are witches and persecutors, adventures and homebodies, dreamers and pragmatists. Her world is both circumscribed and boundless, a place where the stranger at the door may hold a key to the rest of her life. What she most wants—what she most truly yearns for—is what any of us want: to be seen. And look. She is.

It is marvelous to be young on a big city street.

It's a peculiar kind of dissatisfaction, a bittersweet nostalgia for a moment not yet past.

It's as if she assumes everything will go right, and when it doesn't - which, of course, is pretty often - she is surprised and affronted.

It's hard to say what's in my head. It's been a long time since anyone cared to ask.

It's painful to hold out hope for the things that once brought you joy. You have to find ways to make yourself forget.

I want each day to last forever . . . It's a peculiar kind of dissatisfaction, a bittersweet nostalgia for a moment not yet past. Even in the midst of a pleasurable outing I'm aware of how ephemeral it is.

I want to say, Christina, that you are ... unusual. And somehow..." her voice trails off. "Your mind-- your curiosity-- will be your comfort.

Look, I don't mean to be rude, but you could never have a normal life, even if that's what you thought you wanted. You and me, we're not 'normal.

marrying Jim was like stepping into water the exact same temperature as the air. I barely had to adjust to the change.

Molly learned long ago that a lot of the heartbreak and betrayal that other people fear their entire lives, she has already faced. Father dead. Mother off the deep end. Shuttled around and rejected time and time again. And still she breathes and sleeps and grows taller. She wakes up every morning and puts on clothes. So when she says it's okay, what she means is that she knows she can survive just about anything.

Mrs. Scatcherd raps Dutchy's knuckles several times with a long wooden ruler, though it seems to me a halfhearted penalty. He barely winces, then shakes his hands twice in the air and winks at me. Truly , there isn't much more she can do. Stripped of family and identity, fed meager rations, consigned to hard wooden seats until we are to be, as Slobbery Jack suggested, sold into slavery — our mere existence is punishment enough.

My heart is shattered, an all that's left are jagged shards.

People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find...

She is so white-hot furious she can barely see. She stokes the fire of her hatred, feeding it tidbits about bigoted Dina and spineless mushmouth Ralph, because she knows that just beyond the rage is a sorrow so enervating it could render her immobile. She needs to keep moving, flickering around the room. She needs o fill her bags and get the hell out of here.

Si no puedes reírte de ti misma, vas a tener una vida muy complicada.

So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason — to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?" Molly asks when Vivian reads some of these stories aloud. "It certainly helps," Vivian says.

Something inexorable seeds itself in the place of your origin. You can never escape the bonds of family history, no matter how far you travel.

...that the quickest relief will come in forgetting.

The hands clasped together symbolize friendship. The heart is love. And the crown stands for loyalty

The older I get, the more I believe that the greatest kindness is acceptance.

The smallest things get to her. It's as if she assumes everything will go right, and when it doesn't -- which, of course, is pretty often -- she is surprised and affronted.