Catherine Ryan Hyde Quotes & Sayings

Oh. I didn't know that." "So, you're naming your dog Feathers because ... — Catherine Ryan Hyde

He'd be proud of me for crying, and I cry harder. How do you stop crying, Simon? — Catherine Ryan Hyde

All the boundaries of the world disappeared after a good snow. Nathan had always noticed that. The seemingly sturdy, dependable dividing lines between his yard and his neighbor's yard, or the sidewalk and the street, simply disappeared. Erased by white.
As if the world were advising him not to put too much faith in such markings. That perhaps these lines had never been entirely real to begin with. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

It depends how important it is to them to see things differently. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

You know, you think about who you might meet and when they might come. You always know that someday a door will open and in will come the one you've waited for. And then the waiting is done. And the rest of your life can begin. And the minute I looked up and saw you there, I thought, There he is. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

There's two things you can do with a kid like that. Way I see it. You can burst his bubble. Or you can wait and let life burst it. Let life do the dirty work for you. If you burst it he'll hate you forever. And he'll never really believe he couldn't have made it. He'll always think it's your fault for standing in his way. For not having more faith in him. Now, life. When life bursts your bubble, well. It's a little harder to argue with life. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

When I dreamed about the time you would actually sleep with me, I thought there'd be some sleeping involved. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

And then, every time I didn't see her, there was a fall involved. I thought about dancing on the fifth-floor ledge outside out apartment. Every train she wasn't on felt something like hitting the pavement from five floors up. So maybe my father was right about that. Maybe happiness and excitement really are dangerous things. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Nothing's more dangerous than a girl, — Catherine Ryan Hyde

As long as I live, I'm never going to do what they're doing. I made myself a promise. And now I'm making the promise to you. I'm never going to judge somebody I don't know. And if somebody is accused of something in the newspaper or on TV, I'm going to remember that maybe he did it or maybe he didn't. I wasn't there, so I don't know. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Don't you wonder sometimes why so much gets heaped on certain people?" I almost told the truth. That truth being, "I wouldn't dare." I wouldn't dare dwell on a thing like that. I try to look forward in my life. Because what's behind me is a little hard to take. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

No happy marriage was, in his estimation, ever based on thoughtless, automatic untruths and exclusions. And the best way to make someone unhappy, if not downright unbalanced, is to tell her that what she sees with her own eyes is not there at all. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Most big life events are like that. You think they'll be emotionally one-sided, but when you actually get into them, it's always more complex. - Nathan — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Everyone, everywhere was having a life. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

You want to be OK right now, so you trade that for having a good life in the long run. It's a bad trade, but people do it all the time. That's all addiction really is. It's trading away the future so you can feel OK right now. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

But Paying It Forward is about spontaneously offering favors, not needing to say yes when someone asks too much of you. And also, it's about kindness rather than niceness. There's a difference. Kindness is spontaneous and real. Niceness just mostly wants to be liked. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Sorry doesn't mean shit. Not if you don't plan to stop doing the thing you're so sorry about. There has to be more to amends than just a word. Anybody can say a damn word. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Sometime around 2006, I decided I had missed my true calling as a young adult author. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

The shorter your range of vision, the fewer options and changes to trouble you. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

I think it's the things we don't talk about that make us old before out time. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

August briefly tried that on for size. Wondered if he longed for summer because summer made it so much easier to breathe. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Science lesson?" he asked. "Yeah!" both boys shouted at once. They looked up at him with eager faces. August wondered if his job would be different if kids looked up at him with eager faces. And if even these two kids would have been the slightest bit eager for a science lesson if they had been in school. Maybe the school was the problem, August thought. Maybe everybody wants a science lesson if they're sitting in the middle of one of the greatest geothermal wonders of the world. Maybe we've removed all the relevance from the information we teach kids so they have no idea why they should care. Maybe it's not the kids' fault. Maybe we made the first mistake. "I'll — Catherine Ryan Hyde

The drinks were so perfect, so visually artistic. Virginia could honestly believe she would find her salvation in one. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Whether they admit it to you, whether they admit it to themselves, people know where they stand with each other. Virginia — Catherine Ryan Hyde

People remember what they want to remember and forget what they want to forget. If you told him something was important to you and he forgot to do it, he blew you off. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Nothing's a onetime thing," Fern said. "Not in relationships. Everything is the tip of the iceberg. Everything points to something much bigger floating down where you can't see. If you see something rear its head once, expect to see it again. It's like if you see a cockroach in your kitchen. And you don't call the exterminator 'cause you figure it's just that one, and how long can it live? Yeah, good luck with that. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

What a man eats, he should be willing to kill. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Things are so easy to do, so hard to undo. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

I'd tell you to be careful, except for two things. One, it wouldn't do any good anyhow. And two, I think we tell each other that too much. Be careful. Don't get hurt. Don't take changes. Don't try anything. Don't feel. Might as well be telling each other not to be alive at all. Boils down to the same thing. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

At the very bottom of human experience comes a set of certain privileges, a special zone where the rules apply to everyone else except you. It was good of the world to build itself that way, and include that tiny consolation prize for those who have nothing else to recommend their lives in that moment. The — Catherine Ryan Hyde

I've been trying to think of words to tell you how all this makes me feel." "The Tetons?" "Yeah, but not just them. All of this. All this . . . you know. These places. Nature. It makes me feel different. But I just can't figure out what words to use." "Most people say it makes them feel smaller. Like the world is so big, it makes them feel insignificant." "No," Seth said. But then he didn't immediately elaborate. "Bigger," he said after a time. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Not everybody who marries in the church and has a family the old-fashioned way is unhappy." "No, but some are. And even if it's just hit-and-miss . . . even if anybody can fall through the cracks, it's still not what I thought I was buying into at all. It still all feels like it makes no sense. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

As authors, we all have to learn not to be reactive to public statements about our books. It's really not our business what each reader thinks of them. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

It's like a sheet of blue-lined paper, the kind you write on at school, but with the lines suddenly missing. No structure. Nothing is predictable. Everything that might happen now is new. Sometimes disasters make me feel that way. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Of course it landed in my gut to a total panic response, because I wasn't expecting anyone, and didn't seem able to anticipate anything but more trouble. I try not to think that way, but it's more a feeling than a thought, and besides, it's an involuntary response. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

You could do worse than to be amazed. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

I guess if you're really a friend, you overlook certain things. Its easy to be friends with someone who only says things you want to hear. I guess if you're really a friend, you have to cut a friend some slack. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

If you want to see a man come to his senses, try something like, Do you happen to carry a rubber in your wallet? Did I mention I'm not on the pill? — Catherine Ryan Hyde

All I know is that you can't force yourself to feel something you don't. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Maybe the school was the problem, August thought. Maybe everybody wants a science lesson if they're sitting in the middle of one of the greatest geothermal wonders of the world. Maybe we've removed all the relevance from the information we teach kids so they have no idea why they should care. Maybe it's not the kids' fault. Maybe we made the first mistake. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

It takes a lot of energy to be that angry, and I didn't have what it took. I was beginning to feel like a big raw nerve from all these problems, compounded by lack of sleep. I needed relief. But the wind caught the letter and blew it away. Which is not to say the direction the letter took was the problem. The problem was that I thought delivering it would help to resolve things, but I was wrong. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Most people prefer to think that their resentment is entirely the fault of the person they resent, and that twisted logic seems to make sense in their minds. But it makes no sense to me at all ... But it's a popular point of view. Probably because it's so much easier. It relieves you of the burden of any and all self-examination.
(Nathan to Nat) — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Situations are like that. They take up all the time you used to use for working and eating and sleeping. They soak up your whole life like a black hole in space soaks up the sunlight. And then, where you used to have a life, all you have left is a situation. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Where isn't really the problem. The where isn't to blame for the what. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

We can't even say what it is we're missing. It's like you can feel the hole, but you don't know what's supposed to fill it, because it's something you've never seen. You don't want it to be every man for himself, but it sort of is. And there's not much you can do about it. I don't mean to talk in riddles. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Holding his own in this difficult environment. That perhaps he was learning he was not as tough as he'd previously thought. And that the situation was making him sullen. But Nat didn't seem to care to discuss the matter. And Nathan remained unwilling to pry. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

If there's some hidden part of me that thinks like that, I'd rather not go searching for it. - Nathan — Catherine Ryan Hyde

I keep telling you the future isn't set in stone. It's not all decided yet. The future is just what's down the road we decided to walk on today. You can change roads anytime. And that changes where you end up. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

It would be easier if people were just good or bad and that was that.
pg. 313 — Catherine Ryan Hyde

A genuine act of kindness makes me feel like I really am where you cut underneath anything external, and you become what a human being can really be. It's like coming home when you give kindness. Kindness changes us, as human beings, — Catherine Ryan Hyde

I think about the time Mitch asked me why I was such a happy little guy. I was five years old. Pearl had been gone a few weeks. I thought really hard for an answer even though I think he'd gone about his business without expecting one.
Then I said, "I think it's because my mother loves me so much."
He gave me this look of utter pity, like I was the bravest kid in the world. He missed the point completely, you know? — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Speed showering. Speed shaving. Speed dressing. Then it hit me. What a waste of energy. It was all for nothing. I was going to miss that meeting no matter what I did. I could be on the platform right now, waiting for the PATH train, and it would still be a no-go. I could be on the train, heading out of the station, and it still wouldn't work. So I took a minute for four or five gulps of too-hot coffee, which had already brewed on a timer. I wanted to call Sturgis and tell him I'd be late and I was sorry. But by then it was almost 8:35 a.m., and I thought it would be worse to interrupt his meeting. Crap. Crap. Crap. This was the worst. The absolute worst. The worst possible thing that could have happened to me. The job meant more to me than anything, than my own life, than the world. Why did I keep screwing up like this? — Catherine Ryan Hyde

higher and kicked him. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

People die of love. I'm one of the few who'll admit it. That doesn't mean it isn't true.
Take all the people who died yesterday, or last week, or last year. Subtract all the suicides and the so-called accidents of the brokenhearted. Take away the men who got blown away for being in the wrong bed at the wrong moment, the women in abusive marriages who died of cancer because they couldn't find any other exit from their lives. All the AIDS deaths except from the needles and the transfusions, the ones they call the innocent victims. Like if you have sex, you're guilty. Deserved just what you got.
Now tell me who all you've got left.
Without love the world would be overpopulated, except that without love it wouldn't be populated at all. Love giveth and love taketh away and all that crap. You'll probably say all those people died from the lack of love, but I say it's two sides of the same coin. So it's the same coin. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

This is what we do. We do crazy shit because we're broken. That's who we are. That's what we do. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

I'm not saying I know it all. In one way, we've all just got the time since we got up this morning. But I've seen a lot of people walk a lot of roads. Some not so happy. And it makes them what they are. So if you run around putting a pillow under people to cushion their fall . . . well, I'm just not sure it's quite the favor we think it is. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

And the looks on their faces were caught just right. You could see them loving dancing and loving each other. The expressions just said it all.
It was so nice to look at. I was even able to stand outside the fact that it was Molly and Frank and enjoy the look of love on their faces.
Love always looks nice. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

You can do anything you want, so long as you're willing to pay the bill when it comes in. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

I just feel like it's our job to take care of them. You know? And when you take care of someone, you should love them the way they are. Not try to make them different. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

I don't know if war is always pointless," she said. "I know it's always tragic. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

It struck me that this was the second time in a couple of days that just yelling someone's name on the street could have spelled disaster. Then it struck me how wrong that was. To have to keep your life sectioned off like that. A signal that you'd fallen into a bad way to live. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Accepting things. That's what the talk was about. About how insane it is to try to pretend something isn't a certain way, or that you can make it another way, just because you don't like it. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Was something contagious. I'm not sure what you're — Catherine Ryan Hyde

If it takes you apart, that's not love. Love puts you back together. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

A dream has more than one owner. It belongs to everyone it may choose to touch. Whomever it concerns. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

knew I was being too talky. I could hear it. I felt around for the off switch but never found it. Not that I think he cared. I was being too talky for me. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

It's one thing to know the right path and another thing to take it. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

People learned by what they experienced. It mattered little what anyone said to anyone. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

The fact that you don't grasp the meaning of something doesn't mean it has none. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

[There] was a time when a lot of people came to the door. The milkman. The iceman. The Fuller Brush man. Encyclopedia salesmen. There was a sense of interaction with the world that started right at your own front doorstep. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Once you throw down that gauntlet of ultimatum, the "one more thing" will happen. Nat figured it probably wouldn't even matter much what it was. It would be the straw that broke her. And it had been defined. Prepared for. So it would happen. It was only a matter of time. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

[Grace talking to Billy.] "It's like people who want to feel only happy but not sad," she said. "It never works. You either feel things or you don't. You don't get to pick and choose. At least, I don't think so. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

I wasn't into blame. Maybe because I had so much of it directed at me, you know? I guess you can go one of two ways with that. You can reflect it right back out at everybody else, or you can drop out of the whole blame paradigm. I guess I chose not to play the game anymore. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Not a bad life's work. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

I know this is going to come as a shock to me, but I am leaving me. Perhaps I'll say I could not have seen this coming, but truthfully things have been wrong between me for some time. Time heals and I'm sure in time I'll build a new life without me — Catherine Ryan Hyde

But I've learned in my life that not everything that happens needs to be talked about. Some things are better left alone. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

But I bet more than half the people in the world right now are worrying about something that really is going to be okay. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

The divisions of time had gone on vacation, leaving just a crush of constant moments. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Every life matters. Even if it's "them. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

They just want to kill the pain. Everybody just wants to kill the pain. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

I feel that the truth is simply the truth. And that to shield someone from it is only a manner of treating that person with a lack of respect. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

It shouldn't matter whether you understand it or not, August. Or whether it would be enough of a challenge for you or not. It's Seth's dream. Not yours. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Good to get the truth out into the air," Ham said. "Everything grows best in oxygen and sunlight except secrets and guilt and regrets. They like the dank spaces. Drag them out into the light and they fail to thrive." We — Catherine Ryan Hyde

But when you're already swimming in a sea of humiliation deep enough to drown you, it doesn't matter much if somebody throws in another bucketful. It's not worth it to stop and pay attention to that when you need to keep paddling. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Esta bien," Clara called back. They sat in silence a while longer. "You seem pretty relaxed," she said to Billy. "Pretty — Catherine Ryan Hyde

It's really hard to know what's a good idea when you're growing and these ideas don't hold still and neither do you. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Man - I think his name was Frank - hauled me out of there and asked who I belonged to, but by then I'd forgotten. By then I thought I belonged to the earth and the sky, and the sharp, pushing blades of grass that grew for me. Simon came and found me in time, and from — Catherine Ryan Hyde

took her hands away from her face. It was hard to do. She knew she looked a wreck. But if you can't trust a man to look at your real face and not run screaming, what good is it to have him around in the first place? — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Do you know what forever love is? Pearl taught me. It's when you love somebody so much that no matter what happens that'll never change. Like even if you're gone. It's still the same. Even if you die. You die, but not the love. Not forever love. Know what I mean? — Catherine Ryan Hyde

See now why I hate to go outside so much?" "Yeah. I guess I do. But you gotta do it anyway, right? I mean, it's life. You gotta do life. Right?" "Not really," Billy said. "You don't have to. Lots of people don't do life any more. They just stop at some point. And once you stop, it's really hard to get started again. But then, once you get started again, it's kind of hard to stop. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Because it proves that you don't need much to change the entire world for the better. You can start with the most ordinary ingredients. You can start with the world you've got. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

The more I research the bodymind, the more I get that the only workable path to workable health is to forgive the unforgivable in spite of its unforgivability. Otherwise we just destroy our own cells with the byproducts of all that hate. We — Catherine Ryan Hyde

You worry too much. You think you have to do too much. Like you think you're always just about to make some terrible mistake. There's nothing wrong with wanting to learn to dump the tanks. There's nothing wrong with making coffee for me or walking the dog. It's nice. But I get a feeling you're doing it because you always feel like you need to do more. To be more. Like if you don't make yourself useful, you're not entitled to the air you breathe. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Whatever you think your shortcomings are ... you can't just lock yourself in the house so no one can notice or comment. We all have to take ourselves out into the world, flaws and all. And find a way to make the adjustment. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Nathan had never liked anger. It seemed a barbaric and undignified emotion. He knew it always masked fear or hurt, and had often wished everyone could simply be sensible enough to cut out the middleman. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

So, I guess people figure it's not as hard to lose your mother when you never got along anyway. But they're wrong. They're dead wrong. It's always hard to lose your mother. Always. If you loved her, if you hated her. If she smothered you, if she ignored you. It doesn't matter. She's your mother. Your mother. That's just a very tough bond to break. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

They were not children. They had grown into people he knew little about. And they had done so without his help or influence, or even,--for the most part--his witness. It made him feel as though something precious had been taken from him.
pg. 239-40 — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Everything grows best in oxygen and sunlight except secrets and guilt and regrets. They — Catherine Ryan Hyde

What's weird is when you mean a lot more to somebody else than they ever meant to you. I mean, a whole lot more. Like life on two whole different planets. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

Why be given hours and days if all you want to do is make them go away again? — Catherine Ryan Hyde