Holly Goldberg Sloan Quotes

The ability to keep your mouth shut is usually a sign of intelligence

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“For someone grieving, moving forward is the challenge. Because after extreme loss, you want to go back.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“It's possible that all labels are curses. Unless they are on cleaning products.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

And just being there is ninety-nine percent of what matters when your world falls apart

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

Every person has lots of ingredients to make them into what is always a one-of-a-kind creation.

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

She is like me.
Silent.
I admire that in a person. The ability to keep your mouth shut is usually a sign of intelligence.
Introspection requires you to think and analyze.
It's hard to do that when you are blabbing away.

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“And endings are always the beginnings of something else.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“[T]he deepest form of pain comes out as silence.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“I don't want to know how you did it. I want to believe you are magic.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“All reality is a blender where hopes and dreams are mixed with fear and despair.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“From my observation, the older you get, the more you like the word cozy.
That's why most of the elderly wear pants with elastic waistbands. If they wear pants at all. This may explain why grandparents are in love with buying grand kids pajamas and bathrobes.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

If your lost you might need to swim against the tide

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“For him and his brother, he now knew, that music was real. Becuase all you had to do, really, was be willing to use your imagination. And listen.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“The way to make the pain go away was to put your mind somewhere else. you let your mind leave and float above you, where it could watch you.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

I'll be ready. I'm not sure for what exactly. But maybe that's what being ready really means.

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“It has been my experience that rewarding and heartbreaking often go hand in hand.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“Emily just knew that the grocery store clerk's cousin had slipped on a bath mat and fallen out a second-story open window only to be saved because the woman landed on a discarded mattress.
But what interested Emily most about the incident was how the cousin had subsequently met a man in physical therapy who introduced her to his half brother who she ended up marrying and then running over with her car a year later after a heated argument. And that man, it was discovered, had been the one to dump the mattress in her yard.
He'd saved her so that she could later cripple him.
Emily found that not ironic but intriguing.
Because everything, she believed, was connected.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“The sky is filled with stars.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“What we expect rarely occurs; what we don't expect is what happens.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“I think it's important to get pictures of things on your head. Even if they are wrong. And they pretty much always are.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“Dysphagia is the medical term for not being able to swallow, and I know that there are two kinds of dysphagia: oropharyngeal and esophageal.
But maybe there is also a third kind of dysphagia that comes when your heart breaks into pieces.
I can't swallow because I have that kind.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“I somehow make it through the first month. I dress and brush my teeth when they tell me to. And I experience the hollow feeling of complete loss, which is emptiness.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“I force myself to think of anything but the one thing that I'm actually always thinking about. And that is so exhausting that I sleep more than I ever have.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“At least it's working out because Cheddar is sort of obsessed with me, or at least very interested, which in the world of felines counts as obsessive behavior.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“Only in cartoons and fairy tales and greeting cards do endings have glitter”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“I have seen trees that survive fire. Their bark is burned and their limbs are dead branches. But hidden under that skeleton is a force that sends a single shoot of green out into the world.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“A genius shoots at something no one else can see, and hits it.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

But being a brother or a sister (if you are lucky enough) is the role of a lifetime.

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“Physical stamina is a component in leadership, even in the modern world, where it isn't necessary to be able to harness an ox.
Because it is still impressive if you can.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“Life, I now realize, is just one big trek across a minefield and you never know which step is going to blow you up.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

It would look pretty messed up to be a social worker and have dried kid blood as a permanent stain in your vehicle.

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

Pattie saw grief. Her eyes focused on a version of her own young self, and so many other children in Vietnam who grew up without parents, some abandoned because of their ethnicity, others because of tragedy. And her arms reached out wide.

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“Teenage boys are so easily amused.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“A leader organizes people whether they know it or not.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“The girl next to me starts to cry when she sees the sprinkles.
I'm wondering if she's worried about the long-term side effects of consuming artificial food coloring.
It's a valid concern.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“They speak to me, not in words, but in action.
They tell me that life goes on.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“You don't have to watch many wildlife documentaries to know that the herd doesn't accept the lone straggler.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“I want to see this lady out the front gate and into her car and off the street and out of town and then removed from the county and then the whole state and finally relocated to the place they call Tornado Alley in Kansas.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“People usually find a good place for stray dogs, or for the elderly when they can no longer go up stairs or use a can opener. Finding a good place for a kid seems like a much bigger challenge.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

The idea of something for nothing is appealing in some visceral way.
Even free things are never free.
The burden of ownership means everything has a price.

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

Plants (like people) thrive when there is balance.

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“She said they needed to put down a real root system to achieve their potential”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“I am a shadow.
I no longer dream in color.
I don't count by 7s.
Because in this new world I don't count.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

Who wants a seat at my pity party?

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“Appleblossom can't believe the taste of the dark square. Is tehre a way to describe this morsel of goodness? It is so sweet adn smooth. It makes a green snail seem like an old pinecone seed, and every possum knows that a green snail is fantastic eating.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

I will see only what I want to see.
It's possible that's how people get through crisis.
The world where we live is so much in our head.

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“Each blossom held it's own unique possibility.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“The two people I need to get in touch with, the two people who most need to hear this most horrible news, are not here”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

It was possible that he was making some progress in his mental health condition by seeing me.

— Holly Goldberg Sloan

“There was room for all of us in that drainpipe even with the snake there. But if you're not wanted, there's no amount of space that will make a difference.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan