Quotes about Growth

But what you give up you can learn to live without, even if it causes you heartbreak at the start.

What you are able to dream you are able to grow, she says to me. If you don't believe in it, it can never happen.

I take responsibility for the man I used to be, for I carry him with me. As strong as I am, he's a heavy burden

Hard times make for simple minds.

I was not pleased to be sent from my mother, but I occupied myself, a skill learned by children who must sometimes act older than their age.

You were a boy. Life is a mess, that's what Isabelle told me when I decided to have the child, but all we can do is live it.

what you give up you can learn to live without, even if it causes you heartbreak at the start. Whether you are mortal or not, you go on, even if sorrow nags

He wasn't the first man she'd been with, and that hadn't been Bill back home either. It had been a boy she met on holiday when she was fifteen. She had decided it was time for her to have sex, the way someone else might decide it was time to get a driver's license, and she'd gone ahead with it. Pragmatic, that's the way she'd always been.

I wondered if damaged people ever got over what damaged them.

Well, I think of life as a novel. You can't just hop out of the mess you're in and into another story. You carry it all with you.

They both always wished for the same thing when they were sitting on the roof of the aunts' house on those hot, lonely nights. Sometime in the future, when they were both all grown up, they wanted to look up at the stars and not be afraid. This is the night they had wished for. This is that future, right now. And they can stay out as long as they want to, they can remain on the lawn until every star has faded, and still be there to watch the perfect blue sky at noon.

I don't think I'm the smart sister, Isabel said. You are, Sophie told her. You just have a lot to learn.