Deborah Smith

“Life doesn't take itself seriously for long. Joy leaves an imprint even in the hardest sorrow.”

“There are people nobody notices, but the world revolves around them. They're the quiet ones, the strong, peaceful ones, who form the unbreakable hub for a bunch of fragile spokes. True families aren't bred, they're spun together. And at their center, at the center of the infinite wheel of every family of every kind, blood or otherwise, there is a hub, that person, those people, who hold the wheel together and keep it turning.”

“I buried my grief for my son, not my memories, but my grief.”

“At the center, on the lawn of the courthouse, sat a log manger with a life-size nativity scene cut out of plywood. If an civil libertarian had complained about the nativity being on public property, he would have been hunted down like Santa's reindeer during bow season.”

“I don’t ask for guarantees. I’ll tell you what I want. I want to laugh with you. Sit and look at you. Wake up with nothing to think about but how warm and smooth you feel against me. Make a life together. All of this has been worth it if we can have that.”

“Wish it, believe it, and it will be so.”

“Children lose their innocence piece by piece. The layers are carved away until our hearts have been exposed and polished into an unnatural gloss. We spend the rest of our lives trying to remember why we ever loved so passionately and how we dreamed so simply, before life chiseled us down to the core.”

“As pessoas querem fazer parte de algo maior, algo mais profundo do que elas próprias. Algo pelo qual valha a pena viver, valha a pena morrer. Algo tão maravilhoso que estão dispostas a correr o risco de serem chamadas loucas, o risco de nadarem sozinhas nas águas mais escuras, determinadas a mergulhar nas profundezas para encontrarem algo especial, algo que possa durar para sempre.”

“A vida é fugaz. A vida é preciosa. Temos de gozar cada momento. A sensualidade de respirar, de sentir, de querer.”

“Temos de nos reconciliar com os obstáculos que não conseguimos derrubar. Admitir que fazem parte de algo que não foi desenhado por nós e que nem sempre podemos alterar.”

“The hardest memories are the pieces of what might have been.”

“We are all bodies of water, guarding the mystery of our depths, but some of us have more to guard than others.”

“Happy people look young. You’re really afraid of getting older, aren’t you? You should only be afraid of getting less happy.”

“There’s something very freeing about losing the anchors that have always defined you. Frightening, sad, but exhilarating in a poignant way, as well. You’re free to float to the moon and evaporate or sink to the bottom of the deepest ocean. But you’re free to explore. Some people confuse that with drifting, I suppose. I like to think of it as growing.”

“The best sex takes us somewhere. Somewhere warm and expansive, a paradise of lust and happiness. Sex is and can be and should be but only very rarely is an act of communion with something bigger than ourselves. Men fuck and women make love, people say, but we men make love when we fuck a woman we adore: it’s the same thing to us. We mean it sincerely. I had places inside me only Cathy could fill with her body, and I made her happy with my body more than I ever thought I could.”

“I stood there, my head bowed, my shoulders hunched. This is how it feels to be dragged from the cement shoes of a comfortable rut. The slow, steady strain on my legs became an excruciating amputation. My ankles pulled free from my feet. Bones snapped, cartilage tore, veins pulsed blood onto the soft brown clay of the yard. ”

“A chorus of tough southern belles whispered, You need a loyal husband around here. Loyal to you, loyal to your family, loyal to your land.I added, Good in bed, smart, and romantic. Politically, socially, and religiously compatible. And he had to want children.”

“What do you call love, then?"Someone I can't live without.”