Sunday, May 18, 2008

The Deep End of the Ocean by Jacquelyn Mitchard

  • Her impairment was a deliberate choice, not a temporary fog that could have burned off when she felt equal to seeing things clearly.
  • Everything that matters in life is decided irrevocably in seconds.
  • Everybody has somebody.
  • She tended to embrace panic as a matter of course: no hangnail was too small for a short fulmination.
  • You give something, you get something.
  • It's faith that really takes the courage. The belief in things unseen.
  • Maybe you don't have to believe everything. Maybe you don't have to know how to pray. Maybe you have all you can do right now just to hold on. Maybe holding on is enough.
  • She had to play the hand she was dealt.
  • I don't think I can go back and start up life as if none of this ever happened.
  • It's the worst. But it doesn't mean you should throw away everything else with both hands.
  • Was true madness simply a will so ultra-strong it overcame ordinary human response? Or were such people really wandering so deep inside, on a broken landscape, so intent on minding their own footing, that the world outside receded?
  • Nothing in the world can ever be as bad as what she's going through, so she's just opted out of life completely.
  • There is no suck thing as having a normal life again.
  • The only true opera is Italian.
  • Adults aren't supposed to say that stuff where kids can hear them.
  • People have been fools for lesser things.
  • She'd swallowed so many unspeakables that one day they would probably rise up and choke her.
  • Give me a lever and a place to stand and I can move the world.
  • Adults had this idea of you and what you knew and the limits of it, and they got real hostile if you got outside it--they said you were showing off or being an asshole or whatever.
  • No matter how severe the grief we had to endure was, we needed to keep priorities straight, we need to be strong, and try to accept responsibility, because the world wasn't going to cut you slack, you had to make the grade, and you know you have the ability.
  • Have you ever heard of the big purple elephant in the living room? There's this elephant right in the middle of the living room, and the whole family walks around it and pretends it isn't there...You've got to think about it. It's right in front of you.
  • You don't get to be ready for it.
  • How can you have feelings about something you didn't even know was going on?
  • I want to know that I flourished in my youth.
  • Shrinks had to be crazy themselves.
  • How could you be mad at a crazy lady for something she didn't even know was wrong?
  • No matter how smart you were, when it came to how you felt about things, you were pretty much always last to know.
  • They were all strangers brought together to act in a play without rehearsal.
  • I fully expect people to try to protect their children.
  • I think that all the bad things in the world, including wars and religion, and all the good things in the world, including Shakespeare and country music, come from love. That's what I think. But I also think there'd be electric cars and a cure for AIDS and I don't know what else if people didn't have to crack up over love about six times a lifetime or feel like they were missing out on something.
  • Doesn't pay to be nosy just for the sake of it.
  • People don't know what they don't know.
  • Don't half the people in the world marry people they're not exactly madly in love with because they want security, or children, or whatever?
  • You should know better than to believe everything you think you see.
  • There could be worse things than being dead.
  • A kid's personality showed in his walk.
  • Don't go prospecting for grief.
  • But I can never cry when I need to. Or faint when I need to. Or sleep when I need to.
  • Reese tried to slow down the thrum of his hear that interfered with his hearing. His heart rebelled, pummeling harder.
  • All children experienced to some degree the phenomenon of erased recollection. It was one of the most difficult crossroads between parents and children: adults could remember the enraptured tenderness of the early bond; children, whose job was to fracture that bond, couldn't.
  • Not remembering was the same as not knowing.
  • Don't bolt the door behind you is all. Close it partway if you have to, but don't lock it.
  • Fear is not in my vocabulary.
  • You had to keep walking until you figured out what was the right place, keep on searching until somebody found you.

2/7/2007

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