Best 1003 quotes in «memoir quotes» category

I sensed he was the one who might be able to see me clearly, the way I most wished to be seen.

I shut my ears, averted my eyes, turning instead to what I thought at the time was pain's antidote: silence. I was wrong... Silence feeds pain, allows it to fester and thrive. What starves pain, what forces it to release its grip, is speech, the voice upon which rides the story, this is what happened; this is what I have refused to let claim me.

I started something that day. I began creating. Like a stunning, orange-flame phoenix rising from the ashes, I began construction on a new paradigm born from the ruins of old patterns of behavior. I broke the cycle. There was no going back. I was still red-hot angry and looking to fight.

Is there anything courageous or brave about making the only possible choice that will save your life? When you're drowning, you grab any hand that's offered. To me, bravery is a spontaneous decision to save somebody else's life when your own is in danger.

Is that the ultimate need? To secure some agent to act as a salve, a bandage, a cover-up, concealer over the black eye, as opposed to facing the issue head on. Nobody wants to address the fist. We’d all much rather take something for the pain and make it all go away.

I stood in the library admiring the huge book collection. There was something inherently calming about being surrounded by books, even their smell and texture was comforting.

I suddenly imagined the Buddha, staring at his naval, laughing. The truth is so simple, so free.

It felt amazing to make visible my boundaries. The rumors dissipated, then changed. Eventually I turned down enough men that I became the girl who turned down men.

It finally had to. I understood that it wouldn’t be easy, it would be very hard; I’d need to resist the habit I had developed long ago – with conviction. I’d have to be impolite, an inconvenience, and sometimes awkward. But if I could commit, all that discomfort would add up to zap predatory threats like a Taser gun. I’d stun them. They’d bow to me. I’d let my no echo against the mountains.

It has long been my motto that if you cannot get your act together... then the very least you can do is try to make your act entertaining.

The trouble was that I failed to record so much , I wrote, but how could I have believed that if I tried hard enough, I could remember everything? ❖

I think, generally speaking, that children have a knack for picking up curse words. Having said that, my brother and I (although admittedly, it was I who displayed a higher level of fluency) took to cursing like frogs take to jumping. Mind you, we received excellent tutoring along the way.

I think of the friendships I've strained, the generosity I've exploited, the bridges I've torched. Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil; with them, forgive yourself. There may be hope for me yet.

I think of the privilege it is to be able to speak life over these hurting people and believe in new life for them as we strive to love them the way we've been loved by Christ, the privilege it is to watch His faithfulness unfold in their stories.

I thought of my sweet little girl and her chubby cheeks, big brown eyes and long brown hair with bangs that constantly needed trimming. She was all that really mattered in this world, and I could not keep moping over some guy who came in and out of my life faster than a season of American Idol.

I thought those were others. Soon, I was to learn that they were us.

It is a fundamental misperception," Fouts says to me, "to think human life has more value than any other life form.

It is a beautiful and scary thing to sit open-handed and let all your plans float away like dust.

It is an empty room, that afterwards, a soledad, and it sits there at the center of a person's life and waits to be filled.

It is not a single crime when a child is photographed while sexually assaulted (raped.) It is a life time crime that should have life time punishments attached to it. If the surviving child is, more often than not, going to suffer for life for the crime(s) committed against them, shouldn't the pedophiles suffer just as long? If it often takes decades for survivors to come to terms with exactly how much damage was caused to them, why are there time limits for prosecution?

It is not a crime to commit First Degree Writing

It's a mistake to push a man to violence when violence is what he dedicated his life to perfecting. Anonymous

It is the capacity to feel consuming grief and pain and despair that also allows me to embrace love and joy and beauty with my whole heart. I must let it all in.

It is winter, and very cold. There are icicles against the glass, and frost. I am tracing a pattern, before it melts. Before it fades, and is lost for good, like memories

I try to walk around without being noticed but I can’t help attracting attention with my pink Mohawk, black clothing and steel toes, and often I’m with Holly and we’re both tall and arrogant.

it's been a long time since i've thought about that night, that wonderful raucous night. I can still see the president s surprise and amusement while opening gifts. I can still hear the music, the guests singing along and the president having such a wonderful time surrounded by his closest family and friends. What a privilege it was to have been there, to witness the joy and laughter. But Always, when I remember that special birthday celebration on the Sequoia, I can't help but think it should not have been his last. At forty six it shouldn't have been his last

It's a weird sensation, the sadness-so-deep-you-can't-breathe-at-times and yet the gladness-so-warm-and-glowing-you-can't-thank-God-enough that live side by side inside of me.

It seemed as if the mountains, wave after wave of them, were like the sea, going outward forever into distance, till, far away, they became engulfed in clouds, and joined—mountain and sky in one. Standing there on top, facing the enormity of the world, I thought of myself as a man. How boundlessly small we are…

It seems like there is no way to just write your story without becoming someone's poster child. You are not just your own voice, your own history--rather you carry the expectations of both extremes.

It's a technique that started in England a while back. I'm going to say 1892 but, between you and me, I have no fucking idea.

It's hard to be an articulate ghost.

It's hard work to retain a childlike curiosity in the familiar

It's very kind of you to take us in," said the vicar, smiling. "We're so sorry if we've put you out at all." "Not at all!" I said, lying through my teeth.

It's only natural for people to fall, but there are people who, even if they fall, jump right back up right away and run forward, and there are people who just keep sitting there, crying.

It starts with a single breath and the present moment, but where it takes you is into the vast radiance of your true nature, into a magical, spacious life.

It takes all my strength to do daily tasks. To some people, I’m just a number. I’m a projected food stamps debit card lifetime member. I’m seen as crazy or insane, but it doesn’t matter. I know I am bigger than my suffering.

It took me almost two thousand miles in the woods to see I had to do some hard work that wasn’t simply walking—that I needed to begin respecting my own body’s boundaries. I had to draw clear lines. Ones that were sound in my mind and therefore impermeable, and would always, no matter where I walked, protect me. Moving forward, I wanted rules. First—when I felt unsafe I’d leave, immediately. The first time, not the tenth time. Not after a hundred red flags smacked in wind violently, clear as trail signs pointing the way to SNAKES. Not after I’d been bitten—the violation. If I wasn’t interested, I would reject the man blatantly.

It's one thing to have a divinely inspired love given to you to experience and share; it's something else altogether to recognize it when it appears. Our job is to go on being humbled and grateful that we should get to experience such a thing in our lifetimes, and preserve its magic by doing the most responsible thing possible to keep it alive . . . Just keep saying yes.

It's the only way anything will change. Because we are both mother and child, cause and effect, villain and victim

It's the same with the wound in our hearts. We need to give them our attention so that they can heal. Otherwise the wounds continue to cause us pain. Sometimes for a very long time. We're all going to get hurt. But here's the trick - they also serve an amazing purpose. When our hearts are wounded that's when they open. We grow through pain. We grow through difficult situations. That's why you have to embrace each and every difficult thing in your life.

It was as if hell itself had taken human form and come up from the abyss.

It was difficult to go to one of my favorite Asian restaurants alongside the southern section of the square. All around the front door, the exterior of the building looked like it’d had a bad case of acne due to pitting—but the small round holes were from bullets.

It was heartbreaking to realize how we can fail the people we most love without even trying.

It was impossible not to fall in love with him.

It was October in Pennsylvania and on the first morning the ground was frosted. As I walked to breakfast, some guy yelled out, ‘Thirteen inches in the Poconos.’ ‘Is that I porn film?’ I asked.

It was as if we'd known each other for a thousand years.

It was breathtaking. It felt like being inside the beating heart of that pulsating, exotic nation.

It was clear that most of my insecurities originated from my need to have things be “perfect.” I wasn’t sure what bothered me more; the fact that I had no control over the changes of my body and hair or that this horrible situation was only happening to me.

It was my first lesson in the fragility of attraction.

It wasn’t really a loud-mouthed, hyperactive little pig-tailed blonde that made Carl cringe. It was what I represented. While his upbringing was battered humiliation, I was spoiled, doted on, and spoon-fed by the world. I don’t think he was even aware of his intentions to reduce that child to his own state of self-loathing, but he was truly brilliant at it.