Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

• You're going to die and leave me alone.
• It's not news that I'm going to die one of these days. You are too. This is not news, Sweet Pea.
• Sex heals, anxiety kills.
• Her therapist says I am afraid of stridency. She says I am addicted to sweetness. I do not understand why it is an addiction simply because I do my best to think pretty pink and blue thoughts.
• Can you reclaim that free-girl smile, or is it like virginity--once you lose it, that's it?
• You must meet each person's eyes while clinking glasses in a toast. Otherwise, the ritual has no meaning, it's just pure show.
• What do you mean, you "don't know how to love"? Do you think any of us know how to love?! Do you think anybody would ever do anything if they waited until they knew how to love?! Do you think that babies would ever get made or meals cooked or crops planted or books written or what Goddamn-have-you? Do you think people would even get out of the bed in the morning if they waited until they knew how to love? You have had too much therapy. Or not enough. God knows how to love, Kiddo. The rest of us are only good actors.
• If God hides in details, then maybe so do we.
• Who has time to write memoirs? I'm still living my memoirs.
• You can't figure me out. I can't figure me out. It's life, Sidda. You don't figure it out. You just climb up on the beast and ride.
• To me, smells are like an invisible person that a lot of people forget is even there. I would rather lose my eyes than my sense of smell.
• She wanted to soak the words "time management" out of her lexicon. She wanted to hand over, to yield, to let herself float down into the uncharted beautiful fertile musky swamp of life, where creativity and eroticism and deep intelligence dwell.
• I just know that somehow everything the four of us do is important. I believe that years from now people are going to want to know about us.
• Is jealousy a gene passed down like blonde hair or brown eyes?
• You know how some people, when they're together, they somehow make you feel more hopeful? Make you feel like the world is not the insane place it really is? Like when you see a couple on the dance floor who really know how to waltz. You want to wait till the music stops, and then run up and congratulate them.
• There is more that is right with me than there is wrong with me.
• If you wept, sooner or later you'd laugh.
• I'm just going to think me some pretty pink and blue thoughts.
• Uncountable the number of breaths I've taken for granted in my life.
• There is the truth of history, and there is the truth of what a person remembers.
• Vivi worked hard to make every birthday a good one. It was as though she had made a covenant with herself that she would do anything within her power not to let a birthday go bad.
• Use everything in your life to create your art.
• All God's children have different ideas about healing.
• God don't like ugly, Mes Petites Choux. Ça va? No matter what they'll try to tell you, Bébés! God don't make ugly, and God don't like ugly. Le Bon Dieu is a god of loveliness, and don't yall forget it!
• Life is short, but it is wide. This too shall pass.
• Say there is no truth. Say there are only scraps that we feebly try to sew together.
• I try to believe that God doesn't give you more than one little piece of the story at once. You know, the story of your life. Otherwise your heart would crack wider than you could handle. He only cracks it enough so you can still walk, like someone wearing a cast. But you've still got a crack running up your side, big enough for a sapling to grow out of. Only no one sees it. Nobody sees it. Everybody thinks you're one whole piece, and so they treat you maybe not so gentle as they would if they could see that crack.
• There is no escape from our mothers. I don't even want to escape anymore. Maybe we aren't meant to escape our mothers.
• Sometime the bébé she has to get sick to get well.
• The only way any of us are going to stay out of The Betty is to talk.
• In the land of the blind, the nearsighted man is king.
• The married state is a road which passes over hilly regions. You accepted a life of duty and responsibilities when you received the sacrament of matrimony.
• We have to keep these men in the dark, you know, or the whole world would fall to pieces.
• Friends are supposed to act like harbor boats--let you know if you're off course.
• Maybe people are more like the earth than we know. Maybe they have fault lines that sooner or later are going to split open under pressure.
• One breath at a time, Pal, it's the only way.
• Words lead to deeds. They prepare the soul, make it ready, and move it to tenderness.
• The alligators can get you at any age, Buddy. But the worst thing you can do is freeze.
• We are each flawed, and in search of solace.
• My mother's love is not perfect. My mother's love is good enough. My lover's love is good enough. Maybe I am good enough.
• The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person. The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be? What good manners can we show as we welcome ourselves and others into our hearts?
• Sometimes lost treasures can be reclaimed.
• We're all hanging by a thread in the canyon of doom. We're all each other's keepers.

1/13/2012