Karen White Quotes

I looked around the garden, the sun feeling warm on my back. "So why are you here? I would think you'd want to be as far away from a hurricane as possible."
She looked at me as if I'd just suggested streaking down the beach. It took her a moment to answer. "Because this is home." She wanted to see if the words registered with me, but I just looked back at her, not understanding at all.
After a deep breath, she looked up at a tall oak tree beyond the garden, its leaves still green against the early October sky, the limbs now thick with foliage. "Because the water recedes, and the sun comes out, and the trees grow back. Because" -she spread her hands, indicated the garden and the trees and, I imagined, the entire peninsula of Biloxi- "because we've learned that great tragedy gives us opportunities for great kindness. It's like a needed reminder that the human spirit is alive and well despite all evidence to the contrary." She lowered her hands to her sides. "I figured I wasn't dead, so I must not be done

Don't see the notes. See the music. See the story it is telling you. Allow the music to change you. Allow it to give you the courage to do whatever you need to

Rainbows always gave her hope - hope that something beautiful waited for those strong enough to survive the storm.

...as if I didn't know that holding something too tightly could damage it irrevocably.

Have you ever known grieving that ends only when your own heart stops beating?

There was so much we didn't know, so much we would never know. The secrets of the dead are always kept.

But you can't hide from your past forever. One day it will come sneaking up behind you and hit you upside the head.

She and Harriet Warner were worlds apart not only in looks, but also their place on earth–a monarch butterfly and a luna moth. Each had been dropped into lives that were polar opposites, traveling along different longitudes lines destined never to intersect.

We all make choices, Miss Szarka. And if it doesn't work out the way we wanted it to, we can spend a lifetime blaming ourselves or blaming others. Either way, we've spent a lifetime blaming instead of a lifetime doing other things ... I think the possibilities for second chances are everywhere if we just look hard enough. Eve

Hearing again the words from the Gullah woman, All shut-eye ain't sleep; all good-bye ain't gone.

Every life would have some rain in it, but that's the only way you'd ever get to see the rainbow.

Strong winds buffet the sea oats and tall dune grasses, tossing sand and seabirds where it will, winding my sister's golden hair into sunlit spirals of silk until it becomes the only good memory I have of her
the only memory I allowed myself to keep.

Being a mother is like being a gardener of souls. You tend your children, make sure the light always touches them; you nourish them. You sow your seeds, and reap what you sow.

The price for flight. I'd never thought of it that, of my decision having any sort of value. But of course it did. Every choice meant giving something up to gain something else.

He paused as if waiting for her to say something, but all she could do was stare at him and wonder why he couldn't see that she was a ghost and not really there at all.

My mom would say that crying for the moon is a lot like sitting in a rocking chair: It keeps you busy but it won't get you anywhere.

Sometimes bravery can be just another face of desperation.

I think sometimes the best mothers are simply those who make the decision to love their children every day, regardless of what happens.

Those who refuse to acknowledge the past are condemned to repeat it.

It's a male - a drone. They don't have stingers." I

Looking pretty isn't about how people see you. It's about letting people know how you feel about yourself.

It's not always the distance of a trip that determines its value. Sometimes the best trips are only as far as the circumference of your heart.

She thought of the horse with his scars and wondered if having them so visible wasn't preferable to the hidden kind where nobody knew how to avoid the parts that still hurt.

Well, you get out of bed, you eat your grits, say hey to your neighbor, you give extra love to her children, and you live your life. The sun is a pretty stubborn guy, and he'll rise each day just to spite you. But life does go on.

I think worrying is a lot like chewing gum. Eventually it runs out of taste, and you've got to spit it out.

The feelings I had for my sister were jumbled together, like the monkeys in a barrel game we'd had as children. All the brightly colored monkeys with their curved arms tangled and entwined, so convoluted that it was almost impossible to separate them.

It wasn't the mountain ahead that wears you out, but the grain of sand in your shoe

Bees see colors in the ultraviolet range that humans cannot. Some flowers have colored maps like little runways to show the bees where to land. Humans are blind to these special markings, but the bees see them. - NED BLOODWORTH'S BEEKEEPER'S JOURNAL

Surrounding yourself with a lot of desert is a bit like sitting in quicksand: Sooner or later the water will find you and suck you under.

I think that her life was about finding the extraordinary in every day. It was how she could sit in her garden on a rainy day and see the beauty in it. It's what got her out of bed every morning.

But maybe everybody was like that, all of us living the lives we had to while dreaming of the lives we wanted.

There is how we
were before, and how we are now, and the time between is spent choosing
which doors to open, and which to close.

when you lose your sails, row.

Survival is like a stone wall, and kindness is a door.

Sugar, your clothes should always be tight enough to show that you're a woman, but loose enough to show that you're a lady." She

Maybe it was the way of the South to welcome home wayward family members who had no claim to such a piece of history except for a willingness to adopt it as their own and a shared last name.

Love is all about sacrifices - big and small ones. It's only when you know how much you could give up for somebody that you know what true love really is." The whirring fan spun above them,

Do you know how diamonds are made?"
She gazed steadily at him, the light turning her green eyes transparent.
He didn't wait for her to answer. "They're made of a single element - carbon. But, over millions of years, the carbon had to undergo incredible pressure-something like a minimum of four hundred pounds per square inch-and cook to at least seven hundred degrees. The amazing thing is that if there's not enough pressure or heat, instead of a diamond, plain old graphite is made. Imagine that-instead of the world's most indestructible and beautiful thing, you get just graphite. Something to make pencils with. Sure, pencils are nice and useful. But they aren't diamonds.

How wonderful to know your place in the world before you're even born.

But there is room now in my heart for more memories, carved by a letting go that I could find only by coming home to a place I'd never been.

You're strong at the broken places.

I'm trying to say that it takes some people a very long time to realize something they thought was true isn't true anymore. And maybe never was.

We travel with the same packed bags we've always had, until we take the time to unpack them.

every time we remembered something, we weren't remembering the event itself but the last time we'd remembered it. It

Taking care of the details was probably how Merritt took back control, and Loralee wondered whether every girl who lost her mother did the same thing when life got muddier than a puddle.

a heartbreak only makes your heart bigger, that someday all those cracks and holes will be filled in with all the joy and love you haven't had yet.

Because a garden is the heart of a house, where love is the seed and the dark earth like a mother who nurtures her saplings until they bloom, and then waits for them with furrowed arms to return. It is the story told again and again from my garden: from dust we begin, and to dust we will return again.

Must take care of de root for to heal de tree.

Don't think of the realities, Ceecee. Think of possibilities and dreams. Of things you can't even imagine yet. And write those down.

If tears could build a stairway
and memories a lane,
I'd walk back up to Heaven
and bring you home again.

Sometimes hope is all we have, and to lose that is to lose all.

There are no limits to starting over. That's why the sun rises every day. Unless you're running in circles and then the outcome never changes.

Some are called to be gardeners of souls, and she'd tended hers with the blind dedication that accepted the floods and famine along with the sunshine.

Every woman needs a daughter to tell her stories to.

Great tragedy gives us opportunities for great kindness.

Miles and years become suddenly invisible when you find yourself back where you started from, as if you've learned nothing and you are once again the person you once were.

The more we loved, the more we lost ourselves.

But I think sometimes a person has to be forced underwater to see if they're going to drown or swim.

That we need to ask for forgiveness even when we believe we've done nothing wrong." She paused, as if wondering whether she should continue. "And to forgive ourselves. That's usually the hardest kind of forgiveness.

Sometimes all we need to do to forgive our parents is to understand their own childhoods.

It's good to be a little nervous. God compensates those with a lack of talent with an overabundance of self-confidence. -Gigi

Feelings of hurt and betrayal and utter loss poured through me like batter hitting a hot skillet.

A secret society exists, and is living among all of us. They are neither people nor animals, but something in-between.

Grief was like that, Ceecee had learned. It either opened your heart or closed it.

We live, we love. These are the choices we are given, to open doors or to close them. It is all we have, and it is enough

Sometimes I guess you need to lose everything before you realize what's really important.

It'll be all right. Maybe not tomorrow or even the next day, but one day it won't hurt so much.

Jude says it's because that's the way I look at life_ it's so much more exciting when you don't know what's on the other side of the day you're in. you just expect the best, deal with the bumps, and pray that your boat doesn't fall apart under the big waves ...
(re driftwood) It will remind me of him and life in general. Because if you think about it, every day is full of wrong turns and roads that take us nowhere. But when you stand back and look at it, you can see how beautiful it all turned out and that you're standing where you're supposed to be.

I've been the sheriff here for about five years now, and I'm surprised we haven't met."
"She's been gone awhile
out to California," Trip explained.
The Sheriff nodded, replacing his hat,"Sorry to hear that.

I wish I could change things for you, make it so this all doesn't have to hurt so much. But that's the point, isn't it? That one day we'll find that the pain we suffered was worth it.

Life doesn't get easier. We just get stronger.

All you wander aren't lost, you know.

I learned the hard way that you can't spend your whole life facing the wrong way. You'll never see what's ahead of you if all you ever see are ghosts of your past.

There are no completely good or bad people. Everybody makes mistakes, or bad choices. It's how we live with them that make us the people we are.

Edith said that any glass that could withstand such a beating without crumbling was something to be celebrated.

Sometimes it's necessary to tell a lie when the truth will break a heart.

They sat in silence, watching the river flow in the same direction it always had, a ribbon connecting the past with the present, and a reminder that time moved on regardless of whether you wanted it too.

That there are no troubles in life that can't be sorted through or solved by spending time in the garden

I don't hold on grudges, you know. They're like expired milk in the fridge.

I was starting to realize how much the presence of a child could make adults act more like adults.

Because no one can hurt us as much as those we love the most.

All shut-eye ain't sleep; all good-bye ain't gone." The Time Between

and whether you could force happiness on yourself, simply by arranging your mouth in a happy expression.

Moving on doesn't mean forgetting.

My childhood had been vanishing bit by bit while I'd been living in New York, trying to pretend it had never existed. Maybe that was what the old saying – that a person can never really go home again – was all about. You couldn't go home because even though home might still be there in brick and mortar, everything else would be unrecognizable.

Life isn't perfect. It's not supposed to be. We all make mistakes. You bash your head against the wall and you get hurt, but you walk away and make the best of it. And that's what makes it life, Brenna, not perfection. You'll never find happiness if you only expect to find a perfect life. Happiness is something we reach for while we try to learn from our disappointments.

over the smooth lip of the china cup, I thought of how someone's loss had become my gain, of how the tide would roll in and out again as if nothing had changed, and how sometimes the separation between endings and beginnings is so

I reached for Helen's hand, and felt her squeeze back, accepting that I would understand more than most the missing part of the human heart rendered by the absence of a mother and father.

I've found that you can't measure happiness the way you measure yards in a race. You just learn to recognize it when it arrives so you can enjoy it while it lasts.

You ain't dead yet, so you ain't done.

I've always thought that old clothes are a lot like old houses; they bring the past and present together.

To give up too easily leads to regret, yet trying and then failing can lead us to second chances if we do not accept it as a failure, but a chance to learn.