Joanne Greenberg Quotes

Suicide is the ultimate 'one-up,' as it were, the accusation that brooks no defense, the argument won at last. ~ Joanne Greenberg

A nut is someone whose noose broke. ~ Joanne Greenberg

If I want to die, what am I saving myself for? ~ Joanne Greenberg

I'm sorry I'm young," Deborah answered with a bitterness that was half prose. "We have a right to be as crazy as anyone else."
The second part was more a plea, and to her surprise the superbly inhuman fighter smiled softly and said, "Yes ... I suppose that's true, though I never thought of it in those terms before. ~ Joanne Greenberg

Yr had a region called the Fear-bog. Lactamaeon had taken her there once to see the monsters and corpses of her nightmares accumulating there from year after year of terrifying dreams. They had swum through the almost solid ground.
She had said, What is that awful stench?
Shame and secrecy, Bird-one, shame and secrecy, he had answered. ~ Joanne Greenberg

If one is to be doomed, one must be beautiful, or the drama is only a comedy. ~ Joanne Greenberg

And what does that signify to you? he said, perhaps forgetting that if she could speak truly to the world, she would not be a mental patient. ~ Joanne Greenberg

The creative strength is good enough and deep enough to bring itself to flower and to grow in spite of this sickness. ~ Joanne Greenberg

What do you do with mother love and mother wit when the babies are grown and gone away? ~ Joanne Greenberg

At least being nuts is being somewhere. ~ Joanne Greenberg

To praise one thing is not to damn another. ~ Joanne Greenberg

She now knew that the death she feared might not be a physical one, that it could be death of the will, the soul, the mind, the laws, and thus not death, but a perpetual dying. ~ Joanne Greenberg

Worrying is one of my few forms of prayer. ~ Joanne Greenberg

You know... the thing that is so wrong about being mentally ill is the terrible price you have to pay for survival. ~ Joanne Greenberg

It suffered and died in translation. ~ Joanne Greenberg

A humane and authentic book written by another voice from the trenches. ~ Joanne Greenberg

What cook can match herself against hunger and memory? ~ Joanne Greenberg

Suicide is a crime - the only crime that, if successful, guarantees that the perpetrator will not be punished for it. This makes it the most serious crime of all. ~ Joanne Greenberg

Sometimes the world is so much sicker than the inmates of its institutions. ~ Joanne Greenberg

Measure the hate you feel now, and the shame. That quantity is your capacity also to love and to feel joy and to have compassion. ~ Joanne Greenberg

Do you know why you're here?' the doctor said.
Clumsiness. Clumsiness is the first and then we have a list: lazy, wayward, headstrong, fat, ugly, mean, tactless, and cruel. Also a liar. That category includes subheads: (a) False blindness, imaginary pains causing real doubling-up, untrue lapses of hearing, lying leg injuries, fake dizziness, and unproved and malicious malingering s; (b) Being a bad sport. Did I leave out unfriendliness? ... Also unfriendliness. ~ Joanne Greenberg

The hidden strength is too deep a secret. But in the end ... in the end it is our only ally. ~ Joanne Greenberg

Money in the hand is real - coins and bills. The rest I don't believe in, and I don't think I ever did, really. What's a check, after all, but a promise - mine, the bank's. Me, I know, but the bank? ~ Joanne Greenberg

The horror of the Pit lay in the emergence from it, with the return of her will, her caring, and her feeling of the need for meaning before the return of meaning itself. ~ Joanne Greenberg

I have underlined words and sentences in one of the Bibles that has always been my study Bible, but when I look at those words and sentences now, I can't remember why they were underlined. One day I was rereading a short story by Joanne Greenberg, and I came across a long passage that I had marked off, but as I looked at it, I couldn't remember why. Perhaps I had meant to ask her about it the next time we talked on the phone, but now I have no idea what it could be that I wanted to ask her. My Revised Standard version of the Bible is filled with markings, for I have gone through it word for word with study groups at least four times, and of course, I have used it on various occasions to begin speeches. I know that the underlined passages served some purpose, but here and there are verses that have no special meaning to me. It is almost as if a friend had secretly opened the book and made some markings just to tease me. What was the spirit trying to say to me then that I no longer need to hear? Or, what was I listening for then that I no longer care about? ~ Charles M. Schulz

The woman was sane; she accepted the heavy penalties of reality and enjoyed its gifts also. ~ Joanne Greenberg

The memory may not change in form, but years of underlining give it a weight that can become tremendous. Each of the many, many times you are called to remember the cold of abandonment, the bars, and the loneliness, this experience says deep inside you, 'You see? That's the way life is, after all. ~ Joanne Greenberg

Ghosts of the past still clutch at you in the present ~ Joanne Greenberg

Later, they began to explore the secret idea that Deborah shared with all the ill - that she had infinitely more power than the ordinary person and was at the same time also his inferior. ~ Joanne Greenberg

There is nothing that you can do to me that my own craziness doesn't do to me smarter and faster and better. ~ Joanne Greenberg

Don't cut bangs with a hatchet. Don't do brain surgery with a pickax. ~ Joanne Greenberg

The rose-garden world of perfection is a lie ... and a bore, too! ~ Joanne Greenberg

Making children cry for a photographer can be considered mean. But I would say that making children laugh and show off their jeans for an apparel ad is just as exploitative and less natural. Toddlers' natural state, like, 30 percent of the time, is crying, and it doesn't indicate pain or suffering. ~ Jill Greenberg

In return, Joe taught Jay more about the garden. Slowly the boy learned to tell lavender from rosemary from hyssop from sage. He learned to taste soil- a pinch between the finger and thumb slipped under the tongue, like a man testing fine tobacco- to determine its acidity. He learned how to calm a headache with crushed lavender, or a stomachache with peppermint. He learned to prepare skullcap tea and chamomile to aid sleep. He learned to plant marigolds in the potato patch to discourage parasites and to pick nettles from the top to make ale and to fork the sign against the evil eye if ever a magpie flew past. ~ Joanne Harris

You'll never see a hearse towing a U-Haul. ~ Joanne Fluke

Sometimes walking away is best. I should know. It's my specialty. ~ Joanne Harris

We didn't see anyone that day. We had no expectations. Everything was spontaneous. There wasn't a single moment of stress. We laughed like crazy all afternoon – though I couldn't tell you what about. And there was definitely something in the air – call it magic if you like – because that was the happiest Christmas any of us could remember, which makes me think that perhaps, like luck, magic is something we can make for ourselves. It isn't something you can buy. It doesn't come as standard. And you don't need to plan, or to overspend, or to wrack your brains trying to come up with some extraordinary way to celebrate. Because sometimes it's the little things that bring us the greatest pleasure. ~ Joanne Harris

A man may plant a tree for a number of reasons. Perhaps he likes trees. Perhaps he wants shelter. Or perhaps he knows that someday he may need the firewood. ~ Joanne Harris

There she goes. How strange she is: my winter child; my changeling. Wild as an armful of birds, she flies everywhere in an instant. There is no keeping her inside, no making her sit quietly. She has never been like other girls, never like other children. Rosette is a force of nature, like the jackdaws that sit on the steeple and laugh, like a fall of unseasonal snow, like the blossom on the wind. ~ Joanne Harris

Whatever you decide to keep hidden could implode later, with disastrous results. ~ Joanne Guidoccio

With strong self-esteem you can climb any mountain and weather any storm. ~ Joanne Madeline Moore

You're dead," I repeated. "So why are you in my dream?"
He raised the bill of his olive drab ball cap with one finger. " Good question. Morbid, isn't it?"
"What?"
"Dreaming about dead peolpe. Creepy. You ever see a therapist about that?"
"I'm not -" Even in dreams, I couldn't win an argument. Even when he was dead. ~ Rachel Caine

So, I see technology as a Trojan Horse: It looks like a wonderful thing, but they are going to regret introducing it into the schools because it simply can't be controlled. ~ Daniel Greenberg

Part of the triumph of modernist poetry is, indeed, to have demonstrated the great extent to which verse can do without explicit meaning and yet not sacrifice anything essential to its effect as art. Here, as before, successful art can be depended upon to explain itself. ~ Clement Greenberg

For a teller of tales will never die, but will live on in stories - for as long as there are folk to listen. ~ Joanne Harris

Giving up also takes courage. ~ Joanne Crisner Alcayaga

I think when you get out of the big cities people get really freaked out when they see someone who is on TV, because they're not used to that. ~ Bryan Greenberg

Keep fit and have fun!" ~Hal Johnson and Joanne McLeod ~ Kevin Mcpherson Eckhoff

I'm politically inclined towards the left, but I don't like to be in anyone's gang; I'm a bit of a loose cannon. ~ Joanne Harris

The world requires me to re-write its wretched dialogue! ~ Richard Greenberg

My hope for the planet is my children and grandchildren. ~ Joanne Woodward

To fully inhabit grief is to hold the contradictions of the great mystery that loss shatters us and we become whole. Grief empties us and we are filled with emotion. Fear paralyzes us and we lend courage to another. We mourn our beloved's absence and we invoke their presence. We cease to exist as we once were and we become more fully human. We know the darkest of all nights and in so doing can bring the light of our loved ones into the world. We are the paradox. We are the bearers of the unbearable. ~ Joanne Cacciatore

Perhaps the mirror in Sally's dressing room had waved the wrong way and caused her to look larger than she actually was. And perhaps all that skipping had jumbled her brain and affected her ability to separate reality from wishful thinking. ~ Joanne Fluke

Good Friends are like sunshine. A day is gloomy without them. ~ Joanne Fluke

The right circumstances sometimes happen of their own accord, slyly, without fanfare, without warning. Layman's alchemy ... The magic of everyday things. ~ Joanne Harris

I don't write a play from beginning to end. I don't write an outline. I write scenes and moments as they occur to me. And I still write on a typewriter. It's not all in ether. It's on pages. I sequence them in a way that tends to make sense. Then I write what's missing, and that's my first draft. ~ Richard Greenberg

Seriously, my music really does help my acting, and, like, getting in and out of a character from a different lifestyle and writing a song about it. Likewise, my acting inspires the music because I can write a theme that I wouldn't necessarily approach at all in life. ~ Bryan Greenberg

For a moment something almost as rare as the sight that they had just witnessed occurred: Loki was totally lost for words. ~ Joanne Harris

I'm insatiably curious. ~ Joanne Harris

The problem is that she is too pretty. When you are too pretty, the other parts of you do not become strong. ~ Joanne Ramos

Think about it for a while. How can you hope to have any friends when you spy on everything they do? How can you enjoy the present when you can see the future? Most of all, how can you love when you know Death lies in waiting? ~ Joanne Harris

The evening sky was sprinkled with stars ... ~ Joanne Owen

Your greatest enemy is your own relection ~ Joanne McClean

She believed in me. Where I had doubt and fear, she had faith. ~ Joanne Owen

Some people spend the whole of their lives sitting waiting for one train, only to find that they never even made it to the station. ~ Joanne Harris

Some books you read. Some books you enjoy. But some books just swallow you up, heart and soul. ~ Joanne Harris

I can smell her perfume, something flowery, too strong in this enclosed darkness. I wonder if this is temptation. If so, I am stone. ~ Joanne Harris

When Louise worried bout something, it often turned up in her art. ~ Jan Greenberg

NO POLITICIAN COULD devote as many evenings to poker and whiskey as had Henry Clay and expect a decorous presidential campaign. ~ Amy S. Greenberg

The advantage of travel is that after a while you begin to realize that wherever you go, most people aren't really all that much different. ~ Joanne Harris

Decoration is asked to be 'merely' pleasing, 'merely' embellishing, and the 'functional' logic of Modernism leaves no room, apparently, for such 'mereness.' This is part of the pity of Modernism, one of the sacrifices it enjoins ... ~ Clement Greenberg

'The Good Guy' is a totally differently-looking New York than 'How To Make It' portrays. 'The Good Guy' is all about Wall Street and that culture, which 'How To Make It' touches on, but 'How To Make It' also is downtown, Lower East Side loft parties, cool clubs, Brooklyn and that world. ~ Bryan Greenberg

I'm going to get a new hairdo and look terrific and go back to school and even if nobody notices, I'm going to be the most self-fulfilled lady on the block. ~ Joanne Woodward

Like a domestic cat, purring on the sofa by day, but by night, a strutting queen, a natural killer, disdainful of her other life. ~ Joanne Harris

Your path will diverge for a while, but do not let that worry you. You have known difficulty before, but you will survive and thrive. ~ Joanne Guidoccio

I believe in family values and following your dreams. ~ JoAnne Myers

I've never viewed you as an enemy, more an adversary ... ~ Joanne Harris

Solving crimes certainly wasn't as easy as they made it seem in the movies. ~ Joanne Fluke

There will come a time when a person you most likely pushed out through your vagina and nursed from your
nipples, whose bottom you wiped, and whose snot and spit you cleaned up over several sleep-starved years will apprehend you with a mixture of boredom and irritation and say, 'Get a life, Mum.'
This would be a good time to remember that a) violence never solved anything; b) teenagers don't have a full brain yet – the prefrontal cortex that controls the ability to make important distinctions, like who controls the pocket money, only kicks in around the age of twenty-four; and c) you are, in fact, the adult. ~ Joanne Fedler

I did become the one thing I was taught to fear above all else... an abomination, a Fallen Angel. For love of you, my Prince" I spat bitterly, "I Fell from Grace. ~ Joanne Valiukas