Helen Humphreys Quotes

Now I see how many wolf characteristics you had. You were wary, didn't really trust anyone or anything. You were elusive and secretive. You paced out behind the trees, watching everything and waiting for the moment when it was safe to come in and rest by the fire. But you weren't happy there -- no, I take that back, you were happy there, but you weren't comfortable. It wasn't what you knew. It wasn't what you trusted. You trusted meanness, not kindness. Kindness spooked you -- you were always looking for the trap in it. You trusted in a scrappy existence where you had to fight for your survival.

If you pretend to feel a certain way, eventually you do feel that way. That has been a surprisingly pleasant lesson to learn in life.

Forgetting takes practice ... You have to work at it.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds", says Mrs. Phillips. "Our members will not be allowed to wear, or buy, ant hats with feathers, and they must devote themselves to the cause of protecting the birds and discouraging their wanton destruction.

Sometimes life seems very unfair.

Grief moves us like love. Grief is love, I suppose. Love as a backwards glance.

She believes in the words of her fortune teller, but really, anyone could have told her that if you have to stop doing the thing you love, it will kill you.

The heart is a river. The act of writing is the moving water that holds the banks apart, keeps the muscle of words flexing so that the reader can be carried along by this movement. To be given space and the chance to leave one's earthly world. Is there any greater freedom than this?

When a writer writes, it's as if she holds the sides of her chest apart, exposes her beating heart. And even though everything wants to heal, to close over and protect the heart, the writer must keep it bare, exposed.

Who? Mr. Dalton has his hand firmly on Grace's elbow, as though she can't manoeuvre herself through the blockade of tables and chairs.
She could fly right through you, thinks Jack.

There are words in my life that I wish I'd never said. I wish I'd never told my wife that I loved her, because then I had to line up all my actions with those words. I had to always act like that was true. And those three words, I love you, should never be used if you don't mean them. My lying has meant I will never get to use them on anyone else. I went against my own truth, my own heart, and there is really no coming back from that.

The truth is that you do forget people. When you conjure them up, long after they have gone, you can't recall the essence of them, just the outline.

Another time might be easier than this one, but there's only the time you're in, thinks Enid. And it's always going to be lacking somehow. Best to spend some of your moments here on earth noticing what else is here with you instead of concentrating solely on your own misery.

Love is not a good thing, I've decided. It just makes you afraid you'll lose what you love, and then, because your fear makes a space for that to happen, it does. What's the point?

Your leaving will not be solved by your coming back. But one does not preclude the other. And maybe that is always what there is to fear, in everything that happens-what we choosee to love to will choose to forsake us.

This is what I know about love, That it is tested every day, and what is not renewed is lost. One chooses either to care more or to care less. Once the choice is to care less, then there is no stopping the momentum of goodbye. Each loved thing slips away. There is no stopping it.

I have seen animals shot, and I have seen people who have been blindsided by greief. We always know what has hit us. We don't always know that it will kill us.

... the poetic moment is a static one. It's watching through a window while the action happens elsewhere. And then the poet turns away from the window because the poem is done ... It cannot unflinchingly stare grief down. At some point, by necessity, or design, it must turn away.

Perhaps effort doesn't matter, it isn't what ensures survival.

I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to.

Enid had sent Rose a card with the words "I'm sorry" on it. She hadn't known what else to say because at that point she wasn't sure James knew anything about Toby Halliday. But now she wishes that she had said something else. Now that she's in love again herself - a complete surprise really, after all this time, and with someone she never expected to be in love with - Enid would tell Rose that she understands love is never the same. You can love different people over the course of a lifetime, but you won't love any two of them the same way, and quite frankly, you will love some of them more than others. A great deal more. If Toby was that to Rose - if he was the one she loved the most - then Enid would have said to her, "You will continue. But you will not recover. Don't expect that.

The thing about longing is this: It is easy to feel equal to wanting. It is rare to feel equal to having.

Loneliness is sometimes cured by visiting with people, and sometimes it's made worse by the same thing.

I have often thought that poetry is a way to name loss, but it cannot accompany one on the journey of loss.

For maybe this is how poetry can be of use. Though it can't move with us, we can move it between us, pass it among us, so it is held up by our voices, so it moves with our breath, our living breath.

Emily Williamson never thought she would find commitment so liberating, that her conviction to her cause could promote such happiness within her. She stands in the London sunshine, watching Mrs. Phillips model as a heron, and she feels nothing but gratitude and wonder at the beauty of life.

Dark is just light turned inside out, thinks Maddy. Why be afraid of that?

There are many different stories to tell. It's never the same. Every day weather blows in and out, alters the surface. Sometimes it is stripped down to a single essential truth, the thing that is always believed, no matter what. The seeds from which the garden has grown.

I have felt something in the garden I discovered. I have felt the presence of something other. And now, standing in the dark, with a salt wind blowing up from the invisible sea, from the remembered beloved river ...

You can't undo actions with words.

This is the problem with time ... It doesn't follow its own rules. It stretches or compresses at will. It's either a lingering house guest or an escape artist.

What I've always found interesting in gardens is looking at what people choose to plant there. What they put in. What they leave out. One small choice and then another, and soon there is a mood, an atmosphere, a series of limitations, a world.

It's easy to feel equal to wanting. It's rare to feel equal to having.