Best 35 quotes of Susan Meissner on MyQuotes

Confidence tends to minimize the magnitude of the choice.

Dissecting a book was the same as making sense of life. You have to find a way to interpret life, or you'll go nuts.

I don't know very many people who can piece together eloquent prayers when their souls are wounded. Words don't come at those times, but tears do. I have always thought of my tears as prayers.

I used to think mercy meant showing kindness to someone who didn't deserve it, as if only the recipient defined the act. The girl in between has learned that mercy is defined by its giver. Our flaws are obvious, yet we are loved and able to love, if we choose, because there is that bit of the divine still smoldering in us.

No one thinks much about their ability to breathe; they just do it. It's when a person can't breathe, that they suddenly realize they'd been doing something truly marvelous all along.

Our flaws are obvious, yet we are loved and able to love, if we choose, because there is that bit of the divine still smoldering in us.

Sometimes asking God for a reason for something is like asking Him why the sky is blue. There is a complex, scientific reason for it, Claire, but most children, including you, are content with knowing it is blue because it is. If we understood everything about everything, we would have no need for faith.

The past hadn't been erased just because a new future had been handed it.

We are born knowing how to be just. And we die knowing we spent a lifetime pretending we didn't.

When we trust someone, we believe what they tell us is true. We experience it as being true. It's not the experience itself that empowers us to believe it. It is the trust.

When you only do what is expected of you, you never learn what you would've done had you chosen for yourself.

You shouldn't imagine things that you haven't a shred of proof happened.

And what does war even accomplish? How does one country win over another by simply killing its people? None of it makes any sense.

As he mused on the possibilities he became aware of the odor of cigarette smoke. And the sound of muted sobs... As she tried to stifle her anguish, what came out of her was utterly mournful, the saddest thing Luke had ever heard. He wanted to scramble out of the tree house, climb back into his room, and shut the window. But he was afraid to move. She would hear him. So he just sat there, hearing the agony of thousands of failed days bleed out of Nell. He put his hands over his ears and closed his eyes. he didn't want to hear her sobbing, didn't want to acknowledge she felt pain - nor that he knew she'd lived through more pain than anyone else he'd ever known. That maybe she had sent Norah and Kieran away because she knew Eleanor's home had to be happier than hers. He didn't want to acknowledge that. He wouldn't be able to hate her then.

... But you can’t get back the day you make a decision that changes everything.

Change always happens... We adjust to it. Somehow we figure out a way. We straighten what we can or learn how to like something a little crooked. That's how it is. Something breaks, you fix it as best you can. There's always a way to make something better, even if it means sweeping up the broken pieces and starting all over. That's how we keep moving, keep breathing, keep opening our eyes every morning, even when the only thing we know for sure is that we're still alive.

Control is an illusion. No one has it. I don't even have it. You can't wish for control; you can only learn to play your part in a world where nothing is truly certain. And you do have a part to play.

Disease has no intent. It doesn't want anything. It has no malevolent desire to kill. If it could talk it would not say "I want to make you ill. I want to bring you to the brink of death. I want to kill." It would say only "I make people ill. I bring them to the brink of death. I can kill." The disease is like machine that does what it does, but has no cognizance of self. When a machine stops working, it does not care, and it doesn't celebrate when it starts working again. To those that have it, and to their loved ones, the disease seems heinous, deliberate,and personal. And of course I know why they feel this way... when you are in a fight for your life, then surely there is an adversary. There is something opposed to you. Something that desires to defeat you. You want to believe the enemy is the disease. You don't want to believe, even for a minute, that the enemy is your own body. This weak tent of flesh, that cannot stand up against a speck of contagion. This fragile weave of muscle, bone, and soul, that also cannot resist the power of flame, nor the pull of the ground below it.

Everyone has a past, and everyone's past matters.

Everything beautiful has a story it wants to tell'" she said reading aloud the store's tagline at the top of the form.. "I love that.

[Evie] says the flu wanted to make barbarians of us, to have us think life is not precious and the dead are not worthy of our kindest care. Our humanity is what made what happened to us so terrible.

Home isn't a safe place where everything stays the same; it's a place where you are safe and loved despite nothing staying the same.

I hope [Willa] still thinks butterflies are beautiful. I think they are. We shouldn't think for a moment that just because their lives are short they shouldn't be here.

I'm not sure why God made us the way He did... As to why we're here, well, I think maybe we're here to learn to love Him. To learn to love God and to want to be with Him. I think we're here to cultivate our longing for heaven. ' Luke sighed. 'Heaven,' he said, 'seems like a long, long way off, Dad.' Jack nodded. 'It does. But I think God gives us glimpses of heaven from time to time to help up nurture the desire... I see glimpses every spring when the earth renews itself. And sometimes I see glimpses in a worship service when I'm singing about Jesus and all of a sudden I feel like I'm right there in His arms.

It is much harder to pretend than it is to simply be who you already are.

I want to be walking down this street with Mama, headed where we're headed. But her hand in mine makes me feel like I'm not alone in this world where you can't always see what's in front of you.

... love and fear can sometimes feel the same, but each will lead a person to take different actions. When a decision h as to be made, fear usually motivates me to choose what is best for me, whereas love motivates me to choose what is best for another person. Fear urges me to hang on, white knuckled, to what is mine, while love can actually lead me to let go.... when you hold something you love tightly to your chest for fear of losing it, you actually risk crushing it against you.

Please don't let the unhappiness you knew in the past keep you from accepting happiness now.

That's what we did, didn't we, Audrey? We learned to be brave when it was easier to be afraid.

The person who completes your life, is not so much the person who shares all the years of your existence, but rather, the person who made your life worth living -- no matter how long or short a time you are given to spend with them.

This is how it is for all of us. Life will send us across a bridge we did not want to cross, but when we finally open our eyes on the other side, we see that there had been nothing to fear at all.

We're going to be okay. Lainey isn't the glue that keeps us together. We are. We're the glue. Okay?

We're not like God, [Papa] says. We can't know. We can't live like we do know or should have known.

Which one of them would make you the most sad if you had to live your life without him?

You think you have a view of what's waiting for you just up the road, but then something happens, and you find out pretty quick you were looking at the wrong road.