Secrets We Keep Quotes

Shy Carmen, always hanging back from the others, who knew she could smile? But at the sight of that smile he would have promised her anything. He was just barely awake. Or maybe he was not awake at all. Had he wanted her and not known it? Had he wanted her so much that he dreamed she was lying beside him now? The things our minds keep from us, Gen thought. The secrets we keep even from ourselves. ~ Ann Patchett

We are battered and torn from the day we are born, in a world that has blinded and bound us.
Is it any surprise we don't open our eyes to the truth that's disguised all around us?
Like the secrets we keep, and don't know we're keeping, from before there was time, before there were lies.
Can we find You again, this far from the garden? Do we dare even try?
Do we dare pay attention - dare even mention - the mystery we find ourselves caught in?
And do we dare to remember all that we have forgotten?
--"Do We Dare" from Feel Free (1997) ~ Carolyn Arends

Every story needs some sort of secret that impels it forward. Otherwise why would the reader bother to keep on turning the pages? ~ Deb Loughead

I'm already gone. I died that night on the side of that road with my sister. ~ Trisha Leaver

Life is made of moments. and choices. Not all of them matter, or have any lasting impact. Skipping class in favor of a taste of freedom, picking a prom dress because of the way it transforms you into a princess in the mirror. Even the nights you steal away from an open window, tiptoe silent to the end of the driveway, where darkened headlights and the pull of something unknown beckon. These are all small choices, really. Insignificant as soon as they're made. Innocent.
But then.
Then there's a different kind of moment. One when things are irrevocably changed by a choice we make. A moment we will play endlessly in our minds on lonely nights and empty days. One we'll search repeatedly for some indication that what we chose was right, some small sign that tells us the truth isn't nearly as awful as it feels. Or as awful as anyone would think if they knew.
So we explain it to ourselves, justify it enough to sleep. And then we bury it deep, so deep we can almost pretend it never happened. But as much as we wish it were different, the truth is, our worlds are sometimes balanced on choices we make and the secrets we keep. ~ Jessi Kirby

With her I'd buried myself, every memory of who I was now, six feet under with the sister I'd put there. ~ Trisha Leaver

It's naive to assume that another person can fulfill you, or save you, if the two things are, in fact, different, and I have never felt that way with Colin. I simply believe that he fulfills an important part of me, and that Robert fulfilled another equally important part of me. The part of me Robert fulfilled is a part which I imagine Colin, even now, doesn't know exists. It is the part of me that can destroy as easily as it loves. It is the part of me that feels safest and most at home behind closed doors, in a dark bedroom, that believes that the only truth lies in the secrets we keep from each other. ~ Andrew Porter

We're only as sick as the secrets we keep. ~ Maria Nemeth

A haunting, harrowing punch to the heart, Among the Missing is flat-out brilliant. About the secrets we keep, the lives we are desperate to live, and the chances we miss, it's a psychological dazzler. Truly, one of my favorite books of this year-or any year. ~ Caroline Leavitt

Perfection isn't everything," she said as she turned and walked away. "I think the flaws are what make it perfect. ~ Trisha Leaver

We all have secrets we keep locked away from the rest of the world. Friendship we pretend. Relationships we hide. But worst of all is the love we never let show; the most dangerous secret a person can bury are those we keep for ourselves. ~ Kevin McCarty

Gloria put a bowl of stew in Peter's hands. "Eat," she said.

Peter raised the spoon to his lips. He chewed. He swallowed.

It had been a long time since he had eaten anything besides tiny fish and old bread.

And so when Peter had his first bite of stew, it overwhelmed him. The warmth of it, the richness of it, knocked him backward; it was as if a gentle hand had pushed him when he was not expecting it. Everything he had lost came flooding back: the garden, his father, his mother, his sister, the promises that he had made and could not keep.

"What's this?" said Gloria Matienne. "The boy is crying."

"Shhh," said Leo. He put his hand on Peter's shoulder. "Shhh. Don't worry, Peter. Everything will be good. All will be well. We will do together whatever it is that needs to be done. But for now, you must eat."

Peter nodded. He raised his spoon. Again he chewed and swallowed, and again he was overcome. He could not help it. He could not stop the tears; they flowed down his cheeks and into the bowl. "It is a very good stew, Madam Matienne. he managed to say. "Truly, it is an excellent stew. ~ Kate DiCamillo

Hitoshi:
I'll never be able to be here again. As the minutes slide by, I move on. The flow of time is something I cannot stop. I haven't a choice. I go.
One caravan has stopped, another starts up. There are people I've yet to meet, others I'll never see again. People who are gone before you know it, people who are just passing through. Even as we exchange hellos, they seem to grow transparent. I must keep living with the flowing river before my eyes.
I earnestly pray that a trace of my girl-child self will always be with you.
For waving good-bye, I thank you. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

We are always sure that the heroine is fiery and passionate, which is quite an achievement when the plot has had to keep her passive, inactive and loveless for long stretches. Up to the point when Jane's love declares itself, the novel establishes the passion largely by negatives - a method very prophetic of that of D. H. Lawrence, who was in many ways influenced by Charlotte Brontë. ~ Ian Gregor

We only wanted to pay significant sums to keep truly special players. ~ Tony Dungy

One of the few things left in the world, aside from the world itself, that sadden me every day is an awareness that you get upset if Boo Boo or Walt tells you you're saying something that sounds like me. You sort of take it as an accusation of piracy, a little slam at your individuality. Is it so bad that we sometimes sound like each other? The membrane is so thin between us. Is it so important for us to keep in mind which is whose ... For us, doesn't each of our individualities begin right at the point where we own up to our extremely close connections and accept the inevitability of borrowing one another's jokes, talents, idiocies? ~ J.D. Salinger

What I try to do is create an energy, create an excitement, but at the same time keep everybody focused and realize it's still just a game, that we have to move the football. ~ Joey Harrington

If librarianship is the connecting of people to ideas – and I believe that is the truest definition of what we do – it is crucial to remember that we must keep and make available, not just good ideas and noble ideas, but bad ideas, silly ideas, and yes, even dangerous or wicked ideas. ~ Graceanne A. Decandido

Most men can't handle a woman forged in fire. They think they can, and as soon as the flames gets too close they keep stepping backwards.But they forget. We are like this for a reason. Throw a few leaves in a fire and it doesn't do much. Throw fuel, and it explodes. Most of us are already ablaze. So, when tending to a fire, be careful. ~ Lori Goodwin

You know, we can't keep talking about our dependence on foreign oil and the need to deal with global warming and the challenge that it poses to our climate and to God's creation and just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people. ~ Hillary Clinton

Our nation has come so far since 1968 when Dr. King was assassinated, but I know we can do better to achieve The Dream, and that is why I keep marching on. ~ Charles B. Rangel

What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, ma not become picturesque through aerial distance? What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience. ~ George Eliot

This is a great country. You're trying to tell me we can't keep people from coming into our country if we really had the desire to do it? I don't buy it. ~ Joe Arpaio

Answers, isn't that we all want? But they keep taunting us Sephira. Don't you see? They say that answers will find you, but when they do, they betray themselves, and bestow us with unfeasible questions. ~ ReadLikeWildFire

I was trying to understand my grandmother feelings. Why, when I looked at and held the baby, I felt I was floating, that I was on a high.... I keep wanting to burst into song!
So I wasn't crazy, & I wasn't alone. When a grandmother holds the baby, her brain, like a new mother's, can also be drenched in the bonding hormone oxytocin.
Aha! There it was. We grandmas literally, actually fall in love. ~ Lesley Stahl

My first policy move would be to try to get a conversation going in the US about what people stand for and what we really want. Do we want to keep adding people to the world and to our country until we move to a battery-chicken kind of existence and then collapse? Or do we want to think hard about what really is valuable to us, and figure out how many people we can supply that to sustainably? ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

Often being in a relationship with perfect compatibility doesn't work out
coz it's too perfect and there are rarely any difference of thoughts , which with time makes the root of bonding go loose and the fire in heart go moist - Love always , Land up into some fight sometimes , Respect each others decisions , Keep ego aside , possibly then no relation ship can go in vain .... It's simple to do but always tough when we think about it at the back of our mind as an impossible task !! ~ Ayaan Basu

First-person narrators can't die, so as long as we keep telling the story of our own lives we're safe. Ha bloody fucking Ha. ~ Pat Barker

You can't keep putting the same stuff on all these channels, or it's going to get annoying. We need to aim for 'distinctive ubiquity,' so we need to be everywhere but we need to continue to surprise and delight our customers in a relevant and consistent way wherever they are. ~ Mark Schaefer

a light will continue to be a light notwithstanding what might be blocking it from shining. It is! the sun does not stop shining just because we cannot feel it's hotness. We must keep shining without ceasing regardless of life circumstances ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Let's go over it again, shall we?"
"We will not shape-shift in front of your children unless it's an emergency," said Drake.
"And if it is an emergency, we will try to find a place to hide, or, if that isn't possible, we will change so that they see our backsides," added Darrius.
I stared at Drake. He rolled his eyes. "I did not 'flop around' in front of Jenny. I was behind the couch and she was on the stairs. She saw only my head." He pointed at his skull. "This one! On mein shoulders!"
"I know." I waved at them. "Continue."
"We will keep shorts or jeans stashed in many locations so that when we shift back into human form, we'll be able to cover our woobies," said Darrius.
"Excellent." I looked at Drake and smiled benignly. "How's your rear end?"
"Sore," he groused. "Not even Brigid would heal the scratches from that damned cat. ~ Michele Bardsley

Our society is only as healthy as our most vulnerable citizens. It is unconscionable that the weakest links in our country are our hungry children. No other Western industrialized nation has widespread hunger within its borders. We really must put an end to hunger in the United States if we are to keep our prosperity and protect the future. ~ Linda Gray

All you Westerosi make a shame of loving. There is no shame in loving. If your septons say there is, your seven gods must be demons. In the isles we know better. Our gods gave us legs to run with, noses to smell with, hands to touch and feel. What mad cruel god would give a man eyes and tell him he must forever keep them shut, and never look at all the beauty in the world? ~ George R R Martin

Desperate pieces of string that hold us up but at the same time keep us from being anything other than what we have always been. ~ Mary E. Pearson

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life's not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are. ~ Joel Osteen

Or perhaps, despite your brave words to my parents, you've forgotten what love and loyalty look like. They aren't sacraments, Jane, for only God is perfect, only Go deserves our love without judgement. Men--women--we make mistakes. We judge those we love. But we keep loving them anyway, because we know that mistakes can be repaired, and that tomorrow, our love will be deserved again. It only takes faith--or loyalty, as you called it. Those ARE what tie a family together, through tick and thin. And they tie a husband and wife together, too. There is no happy ending, you're right--not in the singular. but in a marriage, there might be countless happy endings and even more sweet beginnings, if loyalty and love are what guide you. ~ Meredith Duran

I do not believe in a God who would set up rules and commandments only to wait for us to fail so He could punish us. I believe in a Heavenly Father who is loving and caring and who rejoices in our every effort to stand tall and walk toward Him. Even when we stumble, He urges us not to be discouraged-never to give up or flee our allotted field of service-but to take courage, find our faith, and keep trying. ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

We regard America and Europe as old friends. We keep old friends, but we make new friends in Japan, India, and China. ~ Olusegun Obasanjo

You would be hard pressed, I would submit, to find a better pairing of occurrences to illustrate the divine and felonious nature of the human being - a species of organism that is capable of unravelling the deepest secrets of the heavens while at the same time pounding into extinction, for no purpose at all, a creature that never did us any harm and wasn't even remotely capable of understanding what we were doing to it as ~ Bill Bryson

The past is only as alive as we keep it by remembering. ~ Lisa Maxwell

As we went through mach one, the nose started dropping, so we just cranked that horizontal stabilizer down to keep the nose up. We got it above mach one, and once we got it above the speed of sound, then you have supersonic flow over the whole airplane, so you have no more shock waves on it that are causing buffeting ... You really don't think about the outcome of any kind of a flight, whether it's combat, or any other kinds of flights, because you really have no control over it ... ~ Chuck Yeager

Such is our tragedy. We want something, and we keep asking for something else. ~ Anonymous

When we started, it was based on lies. It's changing now. There are no secrets in the business. You've got to come with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It's becoming very confusing. ~ Don King

The music we are singing has been sung by hundreds of years by boys. I wonder if God expects to hear it rising off the Earth, like the bloom of a perennial flower. Or if it is a standing challenge, for us to come together and sing for him. Eric tells us in the old days of the castrati, elite Italian choristers who gelded themselves to keep their high clear voices. Some boys hold their crotches when that story is told, but I understand. I could want it that badly, to keep a voice. ~ Alexander Chee

Most of us avoid telling the truth because it's uncomfortable. We're afraid of the consequences - making others feel uncomfortable, hurting their feelings, or risking their anger. And yet, when we don't tell the truth, and others don't tell us the truth, we can't deal with matters from a basis in reality. We've all heard the phrase that "the truth will set you free." And it will. The truth allows us to be free to deal with the way things are, not the way we imagine them to be or hope them to be or might manipulate them to be with our lies. The truth also frees up our energy. It takes energy to withhold the truth, keep a secret, or keep up an act. ~ Jack Canfield

In the past, my brain could only compute perfection or failure - nothing in between. So words like competent, acceptable, satisfactory, and good enough fell into the failure category. Even above average meant failure if I received an 88 out of 100 percent on an exam, I felt that I failed. The fact is most things in life are not absolutes and have components of both good and bad. I used to think in absolute terms a lot: all, every, or never. I would all of the food (that is, binge), and then I would restrict every meal and to never eat again. This type of thinking extended outside of the food arena as well: I had to get all of the answers right on a test; I had to be in every extracurricular activity […] The 'if it's not perfect, I quit' approach to life is a treacherous way to live. […] I hadn't established a baseline of competence: What gets the job done? What is good enough? Finding good enough takes trial and error. For those of us who are perfectionists, the error part of trial and error can stop us dead in our tracks. We would rather keep chasing perfection than risk possibly making a mistake. I was able to change my behavior only when the pain of perfectionism became greater than the pain of making an error. […] Today good enough means that I'm okay just the way I am. I play my position in the world. I catch the ball when it is thrown my way. I don't always have to make the crowd go wild or get a standing ovation. It's good enough to just catch the ball or even to do my ~ Jenni Schaefer

To engage a sequence, we keep in mind the photographs on either side of the one in our eye. ~ Minor White

I saw you
Wandering
Like a lily in a meadow
Afraid
Of your secret potential
I knew
Who you were
And
Who I was.
Your eyes
As green as the grass
We laid in,
Your hair
As orange as the butterflies
We created.
We shared secrets
Of powers
Of mysteries
Until we'd see each other
Soon
But we split and
You fell hard for a
Buck.
I was
Like a doe in the headlights
I loved you, but
I lost you this time
Forever
But not for
Always. ~ J.K. Rowling

As long as we keep our fundamentals strong ... the dollar (and) U.S. borrowing costs will do just fine. ~ Lawrence Summers

We have to have a version of our own story that we keep telling ourselves that allows us to get up in the morning. This version of yourself is what you sell to yourself. I think it necessarily includes ... not looking at certain things. Everybody's got some blind spot. ~ Steven Soderbergh

I received comments on how extraordinary it was that I could keep up speaking for exactly 45 minutes. Indeed, in an age of soundbites lasting some seconds and of quick quotes in the news, all those minutes do seem like an eternity, easy to get lost in. Yet, wait a moment. Television is not the only place where speeches are given. Some hundred thousand teachers teach every day. They all speak 45 minutes, more times a day. They have been doing this for years. Every teacher knows exactly when the time will be over and that by then his speech will need to come to a natural end. It is this tension that determines the success of a lesson. It is a sign of the times that we forget these daily achievements in education. A million students daily attend several 'live' lectures and this in secondary education alone. These are high ratings! ~ Robbert Dijkgraaf

It's not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It's a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it's hard work, but it's the price you pay for owning everything. ~ Scott Woods

As actors, we have to be able to keep ourselves open to feel, and that's a life lesson I think many people don't get a chance to learn. In my personal life, I've learned to carry this lesson with me. ~ Betsy Landin

Ju smiled condescendingly. I understand. I mean, I just got here. As long as we keep winning, the team will keep following your lead, right? ~ Scott Sigler

The journey up to battle camp started badly.
"If you can't even load a bloody truck with all your kit properly, then you've got no bloody chance of passing what's ahead of you, I can assure you of that!" Taff, our squadron DS, barked at us in the barracks before leaving.
I, for one, was more on edge than I had ever felt so far on Selection.
I was carsick on the journey north, and I hadn't felt that since I'd been a kid heading back to school. It was nerves.
We also quizzed Taff for advice on what to expect and how to survive the "capture-initiation" phase.
His advice to Trucker and me was simple: "You two toffs just keep your mouths shut--23 DS tend to hate recruits who've been to private school."
The 23 SAS were running the battle camp (it generally alternated between 21 and 23 SAS), and 23 were always regarded as tough, straight-talking, hard-drinking, fit-as-hell soldiers. We had last been with them at Test Week all those months earlier, and rumor was that "the 23 DS are going to make sure that any 21 recruits get it the worst."
Trucker and I hoped simply to try and stay "gray men" and not be noticed. To put our heads down and get on and quietly do the work.
This didn't exactly go according to plan.
"Where are the lads who speak like Prince Charles?" The 23 DS shouted on the first parade when we arrived.
"Would you both like newspapers with your morning tea, gents?" the DS sarcastically enquired.
Part of me was tempted ~ Bear Grylls

I think that the thing that we learned back in the day of the civil rights movement is that you do have to keep on keeping on. ~ Charlayne Hunter-Gault