Joan Bauer Quotes

My grandma always said that God made libraries so that people didn't have any excuse to be stupid.

I held it over my heart. Mrs. Worth smiled. That's where a book should be carried.

When hope gets released in a place, all kinds of things are possible

Was it alright?"
"It was fine."
"What aspect of the definition of fine was it?"
"We had a decent time."
I've been to Walgreens and had a decent time.

"It was fine."
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"It was fine."
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All people are alike when they sleep."

Jeremiah Lopper paraphrasing Aristotle (p. 146)

I'll tell you something about tough times. They just about kill you, but if you decide to keep working at them, you'll find your way through.

I nearly tripped over Stieglitz, my dog, a forty-pound black-and-white keeshond (pronounced caze-hawnd) furball. He lunged at me with unbridled glee because the mere sight of my presence always made his day. It's important to have a dog. Dogs love unconditionally. (Thwonk)

WELCOME HOME, FOLKS
WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT

When you're going through a tough spell, it's easy to think that's all your life is about. You forget the good things, forget the quiet places. But they're always inside of us and we can pull them up when we need to set ourselves right.

And I suddenly understand what to do when bad things come. You don't hide, you don't look away; you get right up on them, you take the reins and you ride.

If you stick that anger behind you, one day you're going to turn around and find it's gone.

It was February sixth: eight days until Valentine's Day. I was dateless, as usual, deep in the vice grip of unrequited love. It was bad enough not having a boyfriend for New Year's Eve. Now I had to cope with Valentine datelessness, feeling consummate social pressure from every retailer in America who stuck hearts and cupids in their windows by January second to rub it in.

On cheap tippers:"Don't take it personally; they were deprived somehow as children.
On low-fat entrees: "They sell well enough, but nobody's too happy after the meal.

But through it all I held Mrs. Pettibone's words in my heart-the ones she spoke to me after the funeral when she took my hand, looked into my face and said, You've got your father's eyes.

Librarians understand about power - they know how to find anything.

The choices we make can have lasting consequences.

You cannot measure the loss of a human life. It's all the things a person was, all their dreams, all the people who loved them, all they hoped to be and could give back to the world.

The attendant walked closer. "Where'd you come from, soldier?"
Tree tried to think of a recent war and coudn't, so he said, "Canada."
The attendant looked surprised. "Canada?"
"It was a secret mission," Grandpa said.
"It saved the Republic," Wild Man whispered.

Huevos up. Swing up to the window, swing back to Al B. Hall, who says, "Bless you," and would I get him a bottle of Satan's Red-Hot Revenge for the eggs?
Sure thing, Pastor.

And we learned that you don't have to be famous or rich or physically healthy to be a leader. You just have to try to be a true person. We learned that helping other people brings out the good in everybody.

A man who was, as we say in the restaurant business, one taco short of a combo platter.

I'll tell you why I keep my scrapbooks. It's in case my real father shows up .I never met him, don't even know his name ... I've got this feeling he's out there searching for me. When he bursts through the door and tells me he's spent a fortune on detectives looking all over the world for me, I'm not going to sit there like a dumb cluck when he asks me what I've been doing. I'm going to yank out my eleven scrapbooks filled with my experiences and inner-most thoughts on life lived in three time zones in America. I was a Girl Scout for three months when we lived in Atlanta. I couldn't get those square knots down for anything, but I got the big concept. Be prepared. Addie always told me, It's more important to get the big concept than to be an expert in the small stuff.

Sometimes just getting up in the morning and standing at the gate can bring the gate down.

It's a complete rush to get what you've been hoping for - to get it so full and complete that it fills your senses.

Woe unto you when all men speak well of you.

Hope-to cherish a desire with expectation of fulfillment.

My father always told me that in this world we are going to make a truckload of mistakes, but the best mistake we can ever make is to err on the side of mercy

It takes a great cook to pull life truth from poultry.

You know what we learned from living under the rule of Communism?"
"No."
"We learned to get mad.

Wes held my hand in front of Dad, who played it real easy, like I had boys around all the time. JoAnn said I was lucky, and she should know. Her father specialized in fear, being a life insurance salesman, and could bring a boy to his knees.

You got to laugh Tree, if you don't you'll cry.

I don't want you to leap into another relationship without thinking. Looking for perfect is a big, fat myth because perfect isn't out there.

He stood up, put the tree back under the grow light. 'There. That's what's going to happen to us. It's called grafting. Taking something from one place and fixing it to another until they grow together. We didn't start from the same tree, but we're going to grow together like we did.

He shouted out like a drill sergeant, "Men, are we having fun yet?
"No sir!" the vets cried out.
"Men, are we going to fight like soldiers or fools?"
The vets looked at one another, grinned.
"Like fools, sir!"
Everyone laughed.
Luger dropped his cup again, but this time he kicked it hard across the room.
"I can still kick!
And everyone in rehab worked a little harder.

Almost Home
by Sugar Mae Cole
Home isn't always a place you picture in your mind
With furniture and cookies and music playing and people laughing.
Home is something you can carry around like a dream
And let it grow in your heart until you're ready for it.
Losing things helps you appreciate when you find them again
And finding things gives you hope that when you lose things
It might not be forever.
Once, long ago, a girl lost her home, but she didn't lose her dream.
She hung on to it as the wind kept trying to blow it away,
But that just made it stronger.
So now she has keys and walls of many colors
And people around her who think she's something.

Know why I plant trees?"
"No."
"I like thinking that they'll be here long after I'm gone. All those fine memories pushing up to the sky.

"No."
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Finally he said, "Hope, do you want to have dinner with me sometime?"
I dropped a plastic bottle of Gulden's.
We looked at it on the floor. Neither of us picked it up.
"I mean, I know we have dinner a lot when we're working. I meant out someplace. Together." Braverman picked up the Gulden's bottle, handed it to me. He coughed. "A date."
I said, "What is this, an epidemic?"
I backed out the door and left Braverman in the supply closet.
I don't get asked out too much either.

I had taken the photograph from afar (distance being the basic glitch in our relationship), using my Nikon and zoom lens while hiding behind a fake marble pillar. I was hiding because if he knew I'd been secretly photographing him for all these months he would think I was immature, neurotic and obsessive.
I'm not.
I'm an artist.
Artists are always misunderstood.(Thwonk)

When we don't have the words chocolate can speak volumes.

We've got so much in this life that all we know how to do is want more. So we concentrate on the wrong things
things we can see
as being the measure of a person. We think if we win something big or buy something snazzy it'll make us more than we are. Our hearts know that's not true, but the eyes are powerful. It's easier to fix on what we can see than listen to the still, small voice of a whispering heart.

Parents just concentrate on the thing that drives them nuts and all the other good stuff you do goes out the window.

You don't understand how much light you have until the lights go out.

I've never said this to a girl before."
I bit my lip, waiting.
"Well ... " He looked down. "I'm not sure how to say this." He took a deep breath and announced, "I really like fighting evil with you.

But then Macon smiled at me. Just be yourself, Foster. That's the best thing in the world.

Why do you think, A.J.," they say in unison, "that you find these boys so attractive?"
I didn't say that this fiery chemical explosion leaps from somewhere inside me. Parents don't want to hear these things. I shrugged and said nothing.
"Maybe you should try sitting on the intensity," Mom suggests, "just until your feelings catch up with reality."
"We could chain you to the water heater," Dad offers, "until these little moments pass."
You see what I'm up against.

I looked at her from the corner of my eye. Some people are hard to imagine as children.

You can't be with someone else effectively, unless you can stand to be alone with yourself," he declared. "Being part of a couple isn't the final answer. It can't define who you are.

Mom's note on the dining room table to me and Faith read:
Daughters of mine,
In case you haven't noticed, no one has seen the top of our dining room table in months. I seem to recall it is oak, but as the days dwindle by, I'm less and less sure. Perhaps this is because your school books, files, papers, magazines, letters, underwear, etc., are shielding it from normal use. My goal for you, dear offspring, to be accomplished in twenty-four hours (no excuses), is the clearing/exhuming of this space so that we may gather around it once again and spend quality time. Even though I am working the night shift, I will still be watching. Do it or die.
Your loving mother

Everyone needs fudge, Hildy. It's how God helps us cope.

Life and death played out before my very eyes.
You don't see these things if you clean your room regularly.

It seemed to me that the people who made the rules of the road had figured out everything that would help a person drive safely right down to having a sign that tells you you're passing through a place where deer cross. Somebody should stick up some signs on the highway of life.
CAUTION: JERKS CROSSING.
Blinking yellow lights when you're about to to something stupid.
Stop signs in front of people who could hurt you.
Green lights shining when you're doing the right thing.
It would make the whole experience easier.

Words are such powerful things. We can rip somebody apart with them, we can write words down that can forever hurt another person. We can use them to tell stories and lies. We can misquote them and change what other people said to make ourselves look good ...

Sometimes you've got to shout the truth and wake people up.

I've got my Replogle globe, because you've got to keep a world view, you can't just live like you're the only person on the planet who matters

I stood up, and my pants ripped completely across the seam. It was inevitable, but for once in my life, my timing had been decent.

Guys don't understand great art. They don't care that sometimes the camera has power beyond the photographer to record emotion that only the heart can see. They're threatened when the camera jumps ahead of me. Todd Kovich was pissed when I brought my Nikon to the prom, but I'd missed too many transcendent shots over the years to ever take a chance of missing one again. A prom, I told him, had a boundless supply of photogenic bozos who could be counted on to do something base.

Elden started toward me, "I think that's enough!"
The man I almost knocked down bolted from his chair and shouted, "Let her speak!"
Yield, rat boy!

Addie always keeps her promises.
That's why my mother gave me to her.

Mom has the Touch. She knows what flowers go with what occasions, what hors d'oeuvres work with what people. She believes passionately in the power of food to heal, restore, and stimulate relationships, and she has built a following of loyal customers who really hope she's right. If she's wrong, says Sonia, no one wants to know.

When you can carry five full dinner platters on your left arm, you should be able to vote, even if you're not eighteen.

You're going to fall down in this life - everybody dies. But you be the kind of person who doesn't stay down for long. Get back on your feet and keep going no matter what.

There's nothing wrong with having a different way of learning. What's wrong is when people blame you for it.

Revenge of the Giant Grill Man.

In life you have to laugh or you'll cry

You don't mince words."
"Just garlic.

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We've got a bozo who likes rubbing fear and lies in people's faces. He's the only media source in town except us. Who are we writing for?"
Elizabeth waved her hand emotionally. "The American people!"
Baker clasped his brow. "Let's narrow that."
Darrell stood. "We're writing for the community."
"And they deserve the facts," Baker warned. "Don't ever forget it.

If you can't find an answer at the mall or the library, what does that say about the world?

I watched that plant in the office every day.
Watered it; misted it. I loved thinking about it like G.T. said, but part of me was worried the tree surgery wouldn't take. Something would go wrong and then Id be stuck with a metaphor that couldn't go the distance.

sometimes a kid has to act older than they are

Infatuation cannot be sustained indefinitely, my friend. Love that embraces the entire person is a monumental gift that takes time to grow.

Mother, this is a confidential business discussion. I hardly think that your driver can add anything noteworthy.
I could kick you in the stomach, I thought, moving toward the couch. I could drag you across Texas by your pointy ears.

Are you some kind of foot fetish?

Coach Perkins will stand trial for second-degree murder in Cincinnati.

You think all teenagers care about are musicians and movie stars?
Spend some time in Wisconsin.
We'll blow your socks off.

They marched. Not for themselves. They marched to remember the ones who didn't make it back. They marched because seeing so much loss can teach you about life. they marched because we're all fighting a war whether we know it or not ... a war for our minds and souls and what we believe in.

Mountains draw you to a deeper place in yourself

I flopped on the overstuffed kitchen couch and watched him go. I wondered what would happen to all his films and photographs in the upstairs closet - the documentaries on homelessness and drug addiction, the funny short subjects, the half-finished romantic comedy, the boxes of slice-of-life photographs that spoke volumes about the human condition. I wondered how you stop caring about what you've ached over, sweated over. (Thwonk)

When you listen to G. T. Stoop, you understand the importance of being a honorable person, you get charged to fight for the truth, you get angry that so many politicians are playing games with people's trust.

Teenagers are like bees at night, I think. We don't like waking up and we don't always get with the program immediately, but once we figure out our mission, we'll see it through.

Mom put dense cheddar bread into a bag for a man who said this was his wife's favorite - he'd driven all the way from New Jersey to buy it because today was their anniversary. Several women in the store jabbed their husbands on hearing this. I hung my head - Peter Terris wouldn't cross the street to buy me a Twinkie.

Perchance, I would listen. Have you said anything?

It's not fair, but sometimes a kid has to act older than their age. You just pray hard to know what to do.

I don't do normal. I have a reputation to uphold. (Thwonk)

What kind of kids live in Mulhoney, Wisconsin? Would they like me? Would I like them? Have they ever eaten sushi? That's usually how I determine food sophistication. Maybe a personal ad would get the ball rolling:
Insightful, hardworking, 16-year-old girl, emotionally generous and witty, seeks friend/pal/chum to while away meaningful hours. Picky eaters need not reply.

Millstone sputtered, I don't know where you're getting your information, G.T., but that's as bogus as a barking cat!

Sometimes being hopeful needs to be a very deliberate act.

It was bad enough not having a boyfriend for New Year's Eve. Now I had to cope with Valentine datelessness, feeling consummate social pressure from every retailer in America who stuck hearts and cupids on their windows by January second to rub it in. (Thwonk)

How are things with you, sir?"
"Fine." He says it flat."Coffee black. BLT."
Now my heart tells me this guy needs more in life, so I take a short. "You ever had a cheese burger with grilled onions and mushrooms on pumpernickel, sir?"
That takes a minute to sink in.
Then he slaps the counter, grinning. "Bring it on."
I sense he needs more.
"You want a malt with that, by any chance?"
He did, of course. "Chocolate," he says, beaming like a kid.
Now he's loosening up.
It's a privilege to touch humanity in such a fashion.

The problem with human beings is we think we can wear too many hats at once. It's not possible. It's an outright fashion disaster.

How could a man with so much heart die from a heart attack?

Some things go too deep for words.

The problem with the heart is how it can have so many opposite feelings coursing through it all at the same time. It's really an inconsistent thing- appreciating something one minute and hating it the next.

People are so cheap. Everyone wants quality, no one wants to pay for it. Here's the suburban dream
to hire great workers who are such meek morons that they don't have the guts to ask for a living wage.

There they were, the movers and shakers of Benjamin Franklin Hight - the sports stars, the cheerleaders, the good, the great, the gorgeous - bent over their pizzas.
Trish sensed my angst and said, "My mother says girls like Lisa Shooty get the ultimate curse known to man."
"What's that?"
"Too much too soon."
I looked at poor, cursed Lisa who had been sprayed with sex appeal at birth. She had gleaming teeth and long, raven-black curls. She threw back her head and laughed with diamond-studded joy.
"When do you think the curse takes effect?" I asked.
"Not in our lifetime," Trish answered.

I'm working hard to have a good life.
You don't need fancy things to feel good.
You can hug a puppy.
You can buy a can of paint and surround yourself with color.
You can plant a flower and watch it grow.
You can decide to trust people, the right people.
You can decide to start over and let other people start over, too.