Susan Fletcher Quotes

There are many different words inside a city. The world of the rich and the world of beggars. The world of men and the world behind the veil. The worlds of Muslims and of Christians and of Jews.
If you are a rich woman living inside a harem, the world of a poor Christian beggarman is as foreign as China or Abyssinia.
All the worlds touch at the bazaar. And the other place where they touch is in stories. Shahrazad crossed borders all the time, telling tales of country women and Bedouin sheikhs, of poor fishermen and scheming sultanas, of Jewish doctors and Christian brokers, of India and China and the lands of the jinn.
If we don't share our stories - trading them across our borders as freely as spices and ebony and silk - we will all be strangers forever. ~ Susan Fletcher

The Highland way says it's who you say you love and who you serve, which is of worth. Not some title that is passed down upon you by tradition. That's the English way, and the Lowland way
but who can be born a nobleman? Nobility is earned ... 'Tis our choices that make us. ~ Susan Fletcher

But you've brought him happiness, Eponine; he is happy because of you - and that was my only comfort as I cried and cried, feeling so lonely, in my house of leaves. ~ Susan Fletcher

Love is too small a word - too small. ~ Susan Fletcher

The only evil in the world is the one that lies in people - in their pride, and greed, and duty. Remember that. ~ Susan Fletcher

Rona of the hurting heart. We've all had one of those. We have all picked at the seal of things that have been closed against us, and locked. ~ Susan Fletcher

A man can be beautiful, I see that now. It's not just a woman's term, not a word reserved for romantic, virtuous, elegant things. I don't think beauty is neat anymore. It's unordered. It's unbrushed hair and a torn back pocket. It's bright and strange and lovely, and if I were to paint him, I'd use all the warm colours - ochre, gold, plum, terracotta, scarlet, burnt orange. I want him to see me as I saw him then, I want him to find me alone at the end of the day with the sun in my hair. I want his heart to buckle, too. I want him to stop someone out in the square and say, who's that? Do you know her? Where is she from?"

- from Eve Green's mother's account.
"It is written on a piece of thin, yellow paper, and is folded in half. I like this account. I like it because it's true, she's right. We all want out lovers to see us that way - unaware, natural, serene. We want to change their world with one glance, to stop their breath at the sight of us. ~ Susan Fletcher

But maybe the best thing I learnt was this: that we cannot know a person's soul and nature until we've sat beside them, and talked. ~ Susan Fletcher

Which people take the time to care for their souls, these days? I reckon not many. But ... hear this: I think that maybe in our lives
in our scrabbling for food, in the washing of our bodies and warming of them, in our small daily battles
we can forget our souls. We do not tend to them, as if they matter less. But I don't think they matter less. ~ Susan Fletcher

Mostly, she sees the good in the world, the light where there is dark ... She sees beauty where we mostly pass it by. But tonight, she was heavy-hearted. I think sometimes she unfolds all her losses and stares at them, in the dark. ~ Susan Fletcher

I have learnt that nothing stays the same. Today might seem the same as yesterday but no day ever is; we may want no changes to ever come, but changes do, in time. They cannot be helped; it is how the world turns. ~ Susan Fletcher

Tell me about Stackpole then...
Like I am now, but smaller. ~ Susan Fletcher

What if...? A question we ask to hurt ourselves. ~ Susan Fletcher

Mr Phipps seemed to think criminality was passed down through the generations like a stutter, or a squint, or in my case red hair. ~ Susan Fletcher

This is the place. I was certain. For the heart knows its home when it finds it, and on finding it, stays there. ~ Susan Fletcher

Marjan. I have told him tales of good women and bad women, strong women and weak women, shy women and bold women, clever women and stupid women, honest women and women who betray. I'm hoping that, by living inside their skins while he hears their stories, he'll understand over time that women are not all this way or that way. I'm hoping he'll look at women as he does at men
that you must judge each of us on her own merits, and not condemn us or exalt us only because we belong to a particular sex. ~ Susan Fletcher

Strange, what the heart can bear. It can carry grief beyond measure. It can bear a weight that is too great to speak of. But a heart can't bear the world. It has its limits ... ~ Susan Fletcher

There are moments.
You will know them. ~ Susan Fletcher

Hope. It is the frailest of words. ~ Susan Fletcher

Love is blind, they say
but isn't it more that love makes us see too much? Isn't it more that love floods our brain with sights and sounds, so that everything looks bigger, brighter, more lovely than ever before? ~ Susan Fletcher

God works as he chooses - we have our tests and He has His revelations ~ Susan Fletcher

No war. Fight with your pen. Give your battle-cry in ink, and mark your dreams down on a page ~ Susan Fletcher

Is that why we give flowers? To express admiration? Sometimes. But there are other reasons. A symbol of love or of commiseration. A way of saying thank you. A mark of respect. Proof we like someone and want them to smile. And we put flowers on graves to say Look, we still think of you. You've left a space behind. ~ Susan Fletcher

She had a theory that you should try to fill your life with people with wrinkles next to their eyes because it means they've got it right; they've lived and laughed ... ~ Susan Fletcher

The Sultan tapped his tented fingers, staring into the distance. Suddenly, he lunged toward me, took hold of my wrist, and pulled me roughly down to sit on the cushion beside him. "This . . . mermaid," he said through clenched teeth, leaning in so close to me that I could smell the mint on his breath. "The one who sang to the king at night." His voice was fierce, but quiet. I couldn't tell if anyone but me could hear. "How . . ." he began. "How did she think of the king . . . in her heart?"
I glanced quickly up at his face and saw there a look that took me by surprise. An oddly soft, vulnerable, hurting look. The look of a man who might cry out in his sleep at night, like a child. But then the stony mask slid back.
"Did she despise him," the Sultan asked, "for making her sing for her life each night? Did she only pretend affection to save her own skin? Did she . . . loathe him for what he had done before, to his other wives? For his . . . sins?"
"No, my lord," I said softly. "She loved him."
"Do you swear it?" He gripped my wrist harder, until it hurt.
"Yes, my lord. She told me - " I stopped, corrected myself. "She told the mermaid with the broken fin. She said the king - the merman king, my lord - she said that he had a deep hurting inside him. She said that she wanted to soothe him. And when the mermaid with the broken fin . . . questioned how the queen could love him - because of the things you just said, my lord - the queen said, 'I'm not ashamed ~ Susan Fletcher

I hoarded all the stories that reflected the light and dazzled me. ~ Susan Fletcher

Grieving needs space, and it needs so much time. And it needs to be done; it cannot be trodden round or not looked in the eye. ~ Susan Fletcher

We all have our demons to deal with, Little Pigeon. It's when we cherish them - cradle them to our breasts and feed them, day after day-that's when they curdle our souls. ~ Susan Fletcher

I want him to see me as I saw him then. I want him to find me alone at the end of the day with the sun in my hair. I want his heart to buckle, too. ~ Susan Fletcher

That was Leah, before the fade came. Before the sea mist of depression rolled in without much warning and dampened her, softened her so that she had less strength. She had always been sensitive - that was the word he'd heard for her and it was the right word. She saddened at the lobsters that Tom hauled ashore; she bruised, as ripe fruits do ...
Still. There is something in Leah. A flash of metal. A piece of grit in the pearl. ~ Susan Fletcher

She never choose anything except her husband, her motherhood and her trust in God. The rest of it was put upon her and she bears it and does her best. ~ Susan Fletcher

I cannot talk of the power of want, of how much desire can do. I don't think it can be measured. I think want is forgotten too quickly or dismissed as being worth far less than the other feelings -love, hate, envy. But to want something ... To wish for it so much that you think you cannot last, your heart and body cannot continue to hunger for something as much as this. It comes from loss. We want what we do not have. We want what we had, but don't now. ~ Susan Fletcher

We are the Magick
we are. The truest magick in this world is in us ... It is in our movements and in what we say and feel. ~ Susan Fletcher

I trusted him like I trusted the sky to stay above my head ~ Susan Fletcher

They are two brothers whose language to each other is mostly the farm, and the weather, or sport, but it is rarely a language that talks of the past or of what they think and feel. They sit, like stones. ~ Susan Fletcher

Imagine it. Use all your strength and imagine it exactly. And it will happen that way. ~ Susan Fletcher

Isn't it the rarest thing? Never mind the whale migrations, or total eclipses of suns and moons: love that lasts, and is returned in equal measure, is the rarest thing she knows of. ~ Susan Fletcher

Fear is the price we pay for love. ~ Susan Fletcher

Carefully, she stands. And she runs her hand across the top of Thomasina's gravestone as she leaves, like how, as girls, they would let go of hands - gradually, moving their fingertips over each other's palms, as gently as raindrops. She has done this for sixty-eight years and there is a dip on the stone from this. She has worn the stone down with her loving goodbyes. ~ Susan Fletcher

If you let words go buzzing out of your mouth like bees, she always told me, they will come back and sting you. ~ Susan Fletcher

He thinks he can see all her grief in her face, all her love and empty days. ~ Susan Fletcher

Oh there is always sadness. Always grief. I have heard folks say this life could be all hardship and sorrow, if we let it be. If we let our hearts seal over. ~ Susan Fletcher

It is an extraordinary world - full of love, grief, coincidence - and we shall never understand it. We should never try to. We should only be grateful for it. I reckon we should love, breathe, and say all will be well and believe it. And we should share our best stories, as often as we can. ~ Susan Fletcher

It is evening. The moon is small, and new. There are stars, and a stream's sound, and I can hear the wings of insects, in the dark. I think what gifts we are given, such gifts
every day. ~ Susan Fletcher

And in my head I laid out the stories the islanders told me... the flakes of silver, the seals who are wiser than humans, the girl who floated like a patchwork star. ~ Susan Fletcher

But they fly. It is what fledged birds must do, and she's always known that. The nest can't always be full. ~ Susan Fletcher

Those moments that we remember. The tiniest moments or parts of a moment - a tap of a nail against a mug or the sound of a man swallowing, or how the sweeping beam finds the kitchen walls and then leaves them. We count the seconds, he and I. ~ Susan Fletcher

I've heard fate talked of. It's not a word I use. I think we make our own choices. I think how we live our lives is our own doing, and we cannot fully hope on dreams and stars. But dreams and stars can guide us, perhaps. And the heart's voice is a strong one. Always is.
Your heart's voice is your true voice. It is easy to ignore it, for sometimes it says what we'd rather it did not - and it is so hard to risk the things we have. But what life are we living, if we don't live by our hearts? Not a true one. And the person living it is not the true you. ~ Susan Fletcher

I had thought the second sight was a dream, or a vision, a sudden rush of breath. I had thought that the truth might step into my hut, like a ghost, and say its name
that I might find it, if I sought it. But, I was wrong.
You will know it, in time ...
I knew it, now. And I knew it was a feeling
deep, in the chest, or in more than the chest. It was a feeling in the bones, in the womb, in the soul. ~ Susan Fletcher

Carlos was probably somewhere warm, eating three meals a day, and sleeping in a real bed. That was the life ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Writing about someone well known removes that obligation of defending it as a subject, but it also means that some of the surprise and freshness is already gone. It's so different - in some ways much harder for me. ~ Susan Orlean

You make a good point,' Fletcher conceded. 'See, there's a reason why you're the girl and I'm the boy. You think about things while I ... '
'Don't?'
'Exactly,' he said happily. ~ Derek Landy

My dear little daughter," said he, "you cannot be so glad to come back as my arms and my heart will be to receive you. ~ Susan Bogert Warner

A woman growing up under American ideas of liberty in government and religion, having never blushed behind a Turkish mask, nor pressed her feet in Chinese shoes, cannot brook any disabilities based on sex alone, without a deep feeling of antagonism with the power that creates it. ~ Susan B. Anthony

I snuggle closer to him in my sleep and my whimpering subsides to a contented sigh. It almost hurts to see Raffe closing his eyes and holding me the way a kid might hold a stuffed animal for comfort. I reach out my phantom hand to stroke his face. But of course, I can't feel him. I can only feel what the sword remembers. I run my hand along the lines of his neck and the muscles of his shoulder, anyway. Imagining the smooth warmth of him. Remembering the feeling of being held in his arms. ~ Susan Ee

A family's photograph album is generally about the extended family and, often, is all that remains of it. ~ Susan Sontag

Conventions vs. spontaneity. This is a dialectical choice, it depends on the assessment you make of your own times. If you judge that your own time is ridden with empty insincere formalities, you plump for spontaneity, for indecorous behavior even ... Much of morality is the task of compensating for one's age. One assumes unfashionable virtues, in an indecorous time. In a time hollowed out by decorum, one must school oneself in spontaneity. ~ Susan Sontag

It's one of the fliers from the apocalypse cults that sprang up like pimples on greased skin after the attacks. It ~ Susan Ee

My feet hurt, Hell-Bard."
"Good for you."
"My wrists hurt too."
"Fascinating."
... "You're a bastard. ~ Susan Dennard

He thinks I'm a good cook, and will eat anything I set before him. He is regular in his habits and not once through our married life have I been left at home heel-tapping waiting for my 'hubby' to come home. We ~ Susan Williams

Painting. Carefully, I took down the goat, the chicken, and me and ~ Susan Vreeland

Are you demented, you stupid badger ? Is that your problem ? Or are you just an idiot ?"
"As to that, I ... Did you just call me a badger ?"
"A bastard. I called you a bastard. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

It seems to be the thing now that young people are getting back into politics. ~ Susan George

He could not know that thoughts are not things you can give or not give. Thoughts are thrust upon you. You can only hope that thoughts that you don't want will tire of you at some point and flutter away. ~ Susan Meissner

Molly grabbed a vase off the mantel and flung it at the wall, knocking it into a painting of a mountain scene. The vase shattered and the picture frame swayed back and forth on the wall, taunting her with an image of what life was supposed to be like. . . ~ Susan Rose

I always knew I was one of the ones who would leave. ~ Susan Choi

Gentlemen, no one objects to the husband being the head of the wife as Christ was the head of the church
to crucify himself; whatwe object to is his crucifying his wife. ~ Susan B. Anthony

Meanwhile, Susan looked carefully into each of our faces. She was actually waiting for us to answer, to give reasons why people fall in love and get married. Nobody knows, I wanted to say. Nobody really knows. But that doesn't mean you're allowed to not do it. ~ Rebecca Lee

It is the action of bodies on bodies, not bodies on minds, which the crowd enjoys. ~ Susan Sontag

I do not think white America is committed to granting equality to the American Negro. This is a passionately racist country; it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future. ~ Susan Sontag

What? Had a dry spell of killing people lately? (Susan)
As a matter of fact, yes. If it doesn't end soon, I might get out of practice. (Otto) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Nobody else can demean me. I can only demean myself ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Berta, like so many Great Russians, thought of Kiev and the surrounding provinces as a Russian outpost: provincial, backward, but Russified to some extent. She had a respect for both the Polish and German influences there, but agreed with the authorities that the Ukrainian culture and language had little to offer. It was banned in the schools and in the government institutions and was thought to be the purlieu of reprobates, lazy slum dwellers, and rustics. Berta was born in Little Russia, a small fact that she never bothered to share with anyone of consequence. She was a Great Russian, as anyone could see by her fierce accomplishments, tasteful dress, and overall refinement. ~ Susan Sherman

We never really know what others are going through or have been through. Sometimes even the hapiest of souls can be ones suffering the worst pain. We all have our difficulties, our struggles and heartache. They're part of our story. The have a part to play in the people we become, but they don't define who we are. ~ Giovanna Fletcher

I'm pretty sure the past is only good for one thing and that's getting a person where they are at the present. ~ Susan Donovan

The embryo of my second novel, Bobby's Diner, came to life because of my husband's ex-wives. Let's just say, they inspired the writing. ~ Susan Wingate

I think that wherever your journey takes you, there are new gods waiting there, with divine patience - and laughter. ~ Susan M. Watkins

I guess our eyes don't change much from when we were young. Perhaps it's just how we see things that changes. ~ Susan Meissner

There were days when I hated politics. But I fought against hating the people on the other side because we were all in the same business - the business of building our country's future. ~ Susan Estrich

I know she is crying. Her tears fall on the wrong side, into the bottomless well inside her. ~ Susan Abulhawa

Flow is an optimal state in which you feel totally engaged in an activity ... In a state of flow, you're neither bored nor anxious, and you don't question your own adequacy. Hours pass without your noticing. ~ Susan Cain

It's not the letter she imagined she would write, but once you start, all the other letters you've ever written in your life have a way of creeping in. ~ Susan Elderkin

No more stalemates because they thought her unqualified and unhinged.
No more tiptoeing around a room because women oughtn't to run. To shout. To rule.
And above all: no more blighted regrets. ~ Susan Dennard

Predicament crystallized with every passing year, the ~ Susan Abulhawa

I'll suffer no daughter of mine to play the fool with her heart, indeed! She shall marry for the purpose for which matrimony was ordained amongst people of birth
that is, for the aggrandisement of her family, the extending of their political influence
for becoming, in short, the depository of their mutual interest. These are the only purposes for which persons of rank ever think of marriage. ~ Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

Yellowstone, of all the national parks, is the wildest and most universal in its appeal... Daily new, always strange, ever full of change, it is Nature's wonder park. It is the most human and the most popular of all parks. -Yellowstone Park for Your Vacation (circa 1920s) ~ Susan Rugh

I've never given a speech without being terrified first. ~ Susan Cain

God is not grieved because of "all the homosexuals." Not in the very least. That's religious people you're thinking of. If God is grieved it's because the beautiful, incomparable message of redemption and grace, the sweet peace of a loving relationship, has been truncated, rerouted into a message of behavior-modification and sin-management. For ~ Susan Cottrell