Lisa Unger

“In the end, I cared about him so much that I just thought he deserved someone who loved him more than I did.”

“We may say we're looking for love, following dreams, chasing the dollar, but aren't we just looking for a place where we belong? A place where our thoughts, feelings, and fears are understood? - Ridley Jones”

“Depression is not dramatic, but it is total. It’s sneaky - you almost don’t notice it at first. Like a cat burglar, it comes in through an open window while you’re sleeping. It takes little things at first; your appetite, your desire to return phone calls. Then it comes back for the big stuff, like your will to live.Then next thing you know, your legs are filled with sand. The thought of brushing your teeth fills you with dread, it seems like such an impossible task. Suddenly you’re living your life in black and white – nothing is bright, nothing is pretty anymore. Music sounds tinny and distant. Things you found funny seem dull and off-key.”

“It was fear. Fear that, after all the years of protecting his health, his heart, his mind, setting bedtimes and boundaries, giving warnings about strangers and looking both ways before crossing the street, it wouldn't be enough. Fear that, as he stood on the threshold of adulthood, forces beyond their control would take him down a path where they could no longer reach him. Fear that he'd be seduced by something ugly and would choose it. And that there would be nothing they could do but let him go.”

“Bored people looked for drama and caused trouble.”

“Hope is good. Without it, well, you do the math. But hope has to be like a prayer. Putting it out there to something more powerful than yourself.”

“things disappear and are never found simply because there's too much ground to cover.”

“When you start to really know someone, all his physical characteristics start to disappear. You begin to dwell in his energy, recognize the scent of his skin. You see only the essence of the person, not the shell. That's why you can't fall in love with beauty. You can lust after it, be infatuated by it, want to own it. You can love it with your eyes and body but not your heart. And that's why, when you really connect with a person's inner self, any physical imperfections disappear, become irrelevant.”

“It's a little known fact, but parents are like superheroes. With just a few magic words they can make you feel ten feet tall and bulletproof, they can slay the dragons of doubt and worry, they can make your problems disappear. But of course they can only do this as long as you're a child. When you've become an adult, become the master of your own universe, they're not as powerful as they once were. Maybe that's why so many of us take our time growing up.”

“The truth has not so much set us free as it has ripped away a carefully constructed facade, leaving us naked to begin again.”

“The past is history. The future is a mystery. The present is a gift.”

“Love accepts. Forgiveness comes in time.”

“It was a strange lightness, a drifting feeling. Zero gravity. I understood that everything that once seemed solid and immovable might just float away. And that this was a truth of life, not an illusion in the grieving mind of a child. Everything that is hard and heavy in your world is made up of billions of molecules in constant motion offering the illusion of permanence. But it all tends toward breaking down and falling away. Some things just go more quickly, more surprisingly, than others.”

“The Universe doesn't like secrets. It conspires to reveal the truth, to lead you to it.”

“All she could think of was how pure and unblemished, how soft and pink his baby skin had been. How his wonderful body, small and pristine, used to feel in her arms, how she'd kiss every inch of him, marveling at his beauty. When she was a new mom, she'd felt like she couldn't pull her eyes away. Now she cast her eyes back at her catalog quickly, not wanting to look at her own son, at what he'd seen fit to do to his beautiful body.....Not a big deal, Mom, he said reading her mind...Lot's of people have tattoos.”

“You didn't wind up on a pole without a lot of help from your family.”

“Uselessness, she thought, was the permanent condition of parenthood.”

“People who stay in the same town with the same friends for their entire lives never get a chance to find out who they can really be, because they will always be considered as who they were.”

“Others of us are lost. We're forever seeking. We torture ourselves with philosophies and ache to see the world. We question everything, even our own existence. We ask a lifetime of questions and are never satisfied with the answers because we don't recognize anyone as an authority to give them. We see life and the world as an enormous puzzle that we might never understand, that our questions might go unanswered until the day we die, almost never occurs to us. And when it does, it fills us with dread.”

“Many people believe that evil is the presence of something. I think it's the absence of something.”

“I think most people are just trying to be happy, and that most of their actions, however misguided, are in line with that goal. Most people just want to feel they belong somewhere, want to be loved, and want to feel they're important to someone. If you really examine all the wrongheaded and messed-up things they do, they can most often be traced back to that basic desire. The abusers, the addicted, the cruel and unpleasant, the manipulators --these are just people who started this quest for happiness in the basement of their lives. Someone communicated to them through word or deed that they were undeserving, so they think they have to claw their way there over the backs of others, leaving scars and creating damage. Of course, they only create more misery for themselves and others.”

“I loved him so much. It didn't change all the reasons we couldn't be together, but it kept me returning to his body, kept my skin seeking his skin over and over again in the sad dance we did.”

“He'd been raised to give women what they wanted. 'You can fight,' his father told him. 'You can bitch. If you're a real prick, you can overpower. But the pain over the long haul ... just not worth it, son. Surrender young and happily with fewer scars.' The old man was right about that.”

“I can get my head turned by a good-looking guy as much as the next girl. But sexy doesn't impress me. Smart impresses me, strength of character impresses me. But most of all, I am impressed by kindness. Kindness, I think, comes from learning hard lessons well, from falling and picking yourself up. It comes from surviving failure and loss. It implies an understanding of the human condition, forgives its many flaws and quirks. When I see that in someone, it fills me with admiration.”

“There have been plenty of chances to close my eyes and go back to the sleep of my life as it was, but I hadn't taken any of them. Do I wish now that I had? It's hard to answer that question, as the wraiths move closer.”

“It's strange how memory gets twisted and pulled like taffy in its retelling, how a single event can mean something different to everyone present.”

“When you love someone, it doesn't really matter if they love you back or not. Having love in your heart for someone is its own reward. or punishment, depending on the circumstances.”

“We had a great friendship, good sex, a shared passion for the dinosaur room at the Museum of Natural History and Haagen-Daz French Vanilla ice cream. But love is more than the sum of its parts, isn't it?”

“Writers are first and foremost observers. We lose ourselves in the watching and then the telling of the world we find. Often we feel on the fringes, in the margins of life. And that's where we belong. What you are a part of, you cannot observe.”

“Just because people treat you like shit, just because you may feel like shit sometimes, doesn't mean you are shit. You can make something of your life. You can give of yourself in this world to make it a better place." - Jake quoting his mentor, Arnie Coel”

“Everyone always talks about how well mothers know their children. No one ever seems to notice how well children know their mothers.”

“Motherhood was an ever widening circle of good-byes.”

“You [meaning mothers] said good-bye a little every day -- from the minute they left your body until they left your home.”

“The universe conspires to reveal the truth and to make your path easy if you have the courage to follow the signs.”