Patti Callahan Henry
Patti Callahan Henry is a New York Times, Globe and Mail, and USA Today bestselling author of sixteen novels, including her newest, The Secret Book of Flora Lea. She’s also a podcast host of original content for her novels, Surviving Savannah and Becoming Mrs. Lewis.
She is the recipient of The Christy Award “Book of the Year”; The Harper Lee Distinguished Writer of the Year and the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year for Becoming Mrs. Lewis. She is the co-host and co-creator of the popular weekly online Friends and Fiction live web show and podcast. Patti also was a contributor to the monthly life lesson essay column for Parade Magazine. She’s published in numerous anthologies, articles, and short story collections, including an Audible Original about Florence Nightingale, titled Wild Swan narrated by the Tony Award winner, Cynthia Erivo.
A full-time author, mother of three, and grandmother of two, she lives in Mountain Brook, Alabama with her husband, Pat Henry.
“A broken heart, too much cold beer, ocean waves and a willing man were never a good combination, no matter what the country songs said.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“I DID my life - one thing to do after another, always something else to do. Because you don't need a heart to DO, but you do need one to live.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“You need to take care of the root in order to heal the tree. - Gullah Proverb”
Patti Callahan Henry
“Maybe I'd ignored longing so many times through the years until eventually I'd just stopped feeling it.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“No Matter how you try to cover up smoke, it must come out.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“When you know you love someone, when you know it's finally the right time, you don't just wait around for the right words, you just say the sentences even if they're all mixed up and imperfect.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“I believe it's a miracle in life when you find people who care about and desire the same things you do, and creativity does that -- brings those people together in one place.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“I hope you never understand what it is to know that all you believed is wrong--sorely wrong.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“You think it is so different because you live here in this time, in this place, because I'm from the far side of the sea. But we are attached by the water between us. It is the same tide and moon, the same sea, love, fear, losing, and death. Love does not change with time. The love that fills us and empties us, that clips our wings so thatwe must decide whether to learn to fly after that. To love or to fear.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“People say it all the time--'follow your heart.' What are we supposed to do--take our heart out and walk around behind it--follow it down the sidewalk to the mall? Your feet will lead you to your heart. Ha! "Maybe it just means you should know your heart, because if you know it, you might do what it says to do. I don't think it means you do whatever you damn well please. I don't think the heart speaks very loudly either--just tosses you hints and whispers.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“Those are the facts. It's easy to believe in facts, my dear. To believe in the story you need faith. Tell me the story as you experienced it.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“Grief wraps around people, takes them to a place they would not go otherwise.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“There were some things that needed to be said even if the person you were saying them to didn't understand; words that must be released from their trapped place where their flapping to get out could cause internal damage.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“Over time, hidden truths morph in the dark soil of deceit into something much worse.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“You don't always need proof to know something.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“Cheating and lying aren't struggles, they're reasons to break up.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“There are always consequences to the truth.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“There are trials and mistakes and even wars along the path of marriage.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“Sometimes we know who we want to be and what we want to do long... long before we know how to get there.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“I was never without a book, just in case there were empty moments to slip into a life that wasn't mine.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“Stories are always braided together - one affecting the other.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“Things aren't obvious unless we see them.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“Let the story settle inside you. Let it move and twist around until you see what it has to say to you.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“We have to know the truth about our past to discover our future.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“The lowest ebb brings the highest tide.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“If only it were so easy to pick up the broken pieces of life, glue them back together, and cover them with paint like nothing had ever happened.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“The right thing at the wrong time is never the right thing.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“...hidden truths morph in the dark soil of deceit into something much worse.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“...memory is a cloudy, disjointed thing - like disconnected dreams with images scattered and thrown to settle where they please.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“This is the thing we must guard against: that others' expectations, especially our families', do not become our own.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“What fills the eye fills the heart.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“It is not about how it ends; it is about the journey. The full story. You have to know the full story to care about or know the ending.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“Edges of the ocean. The water is what ties us together, yes? You at one edge, me at the other, but the same ocean, the same water.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“Be careful what you believe - it is who you are.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“Souls bound together can't be forever torn apart by distance and neither by death.”
Patti Callahan Henry
“This is now and forever - the moment everyone must have, the moment that encompasses all other moments; now and before, now and after: all time.”
Patti Callahan Henry