Rachel Simon Quotes

“A person comes into the world with a fist-and a grasp. Yes, we are built to fight one another, but also to embrace. How cleverly we are created.”

— Rachel Simon

“There were two kinds of students who liked the library: those who devoured one book after another and those who savored the same book repeatedly. Now she understood those rereaders differently ... she realized it was not the rereading that led to fresh insights. It was the rereader
because when a person is changing inside, there are inevitably new things to see.”

— Rachel Simon

“Silence made space for other people's words, which was important for those who needed to be listened to.”

— Rachel Simon

“There are two kinds of hope: the kind you couldn't do anything about and the kind you could. And even if the kind you could do something about wasn't what you'd originally wanted, it was still worth doing. A rainy day is better than no day. A small happiness can make a big sadness less sad.”

— Rachel Simon

“A rainy day can actually be a very important day. And a small hope isn't really small if it makes a lost hope less sad.”

— Rachel Simon

“She felt so lovely in his hands. She felt so loved in his eyes.”

— Rachel Simon

“How many other lives are hidden, and hearts are seeking? How many would give anything in the world to be held by the person they love?”

— Rachel Simon

“Happiness, I have grasped, is a destination, like strawberry Fields. Once you find the way in, there you are, and you'll never feel low again.”

— Rachel Simon

“Sometimes you think you know what you want, she said, hugging her children, until you see how much more you can have.”

— Rachel Simon

“She had wondered which was worse: the sudden good-bye you know is a good-bye or the long good-bye you have to guess.”

— Rachel Simon

“He thought that maybe when you're making your way forward into your life, it just looks higgledy-piggledy, the way, if you were a fly walking across one of Beautiful Girl's drawings all you'd be able to see was green, then blue, then yellow. Only if you got in the air before the swat came down would you see the colors belonged to a big drawing, with the green for this part of the picture, the blue and yellow for others, every color being just where if was meant to be. Could that be what life was?”

— Rachel Simon

And Lynnie understood. There were two kinds of hope: the kind you couldn't do anything about and the kind you could. And even if the kind you could do something about wasn't what you'd originally wanted, it was still worth doing. A rainy day is better than no day. A small happiness can make a big sadness less sad.
p 313
"The sky was crying outside, and as she watched the drops come down, she thought: A rainy day can actually be a very important day. And a small hope isn't really small if it makes a lost hope less sad."
p 318
Lynnie about the lost hope of finding Homan, the hope of seeing the lighthouse/connecting with her daughter and how selling her art work was doing something about it.

— Rachel Simon

Follow your inclination. It will take you to the thoughts you'd never known you'd had.

— Rachel Simon

“Well, ain't that just the way of the world. Everything come to an end, whether you wants it to or not. All that nature out there: over. The Snare: dead and gone. Even a love that make a man giddy and romantic, that give him a hope and joy he never known, that brave him into taking a slingshot to the impossible and bringing it almost complete to its knees
even a love like that come to an end. Life just ashes to ashes and dust to dust. And there is nothing you can do about it neither. (Homan)”

— Rachel Simon

But never had come first.

— Rachel Simon

“She's sad a lot. She's sad in the way Laura wears glasses and Max has freckles and Beth is retarded. There's no reason, it's just the way it is.”

— Rachel Simon

“Yes, we can all cart our fractured selves along as we move through our lives. But we can choose whether we keep plodding along the same rutted road, or take a turn we'd never thought was ours to take.”

— Rachel Simon

When change happened to an individual, it happened to everyone around her - sometimes in ways she wished for, though sometimes in ways she wished against
Lynnie p 228-229

— Rachel Simon

He could not talk himself out of pain any longer. He had no one to be strong for. So finally, he cried. He cried with deep sobs, head bent to the ground, palms pressed to his eyes. He cried so hard that sorrow rushed out of his face. He cried until he felt like the sea.

— Rachel Simon

Then," he says, "as my mind got functioning, everything was just beautiful. There was no right or wrong feeling, no social pressure. I believe that's what heaven's going to be like ... "
p 55

— Rachel Simon

“So you never know when you can get through.
p 179 Jack the Bus Driver talking about helping a woman on the bus who was an alcoholic”

— Rachel Simon

“Maybe we are all Beths, boarding other people's life journeys, or letting them hop aboard ours. For a while we ride together. A few minutes, a few miles. Companions on the road, sharing our air and our view, our feet swaying to the same beat. Then you get off at your stop, or I get off at mine. Unless we decide to stay on longer together.
p 251”

— Rachel Simon

“But those were only the headlines. The more important stories lay deep inside ...
p 292”

— Rachel Simon

The reactions of others were actually another lesson she'd learned about change. When change happened to an individual, it happened to everyone around her - sometimes in ways she wished for, though sometimes in ways she wished against.

— Rachel Simon

“And she'd felt an opening in her chest where she hadn't known anything was closed.”

— Rachel Simon

“When I speak of religion I mean a constant inward sense of communion with God ...”

— Rachel Simon

“In our days of prosperity it is more difficult to sustain a religious spirit than in times of adversity, because we are apt to forget that God who has bountifully given may also take away.”

— Rachel Simon