Charles Martin Quotes & Sayings

If your knuckles are bloodier than your knees,then you're fighting the wrong battle. — Charles Martin

You know sometimes when I walk into your room with a flashlight or a candle?' I nodded. 'Well, love is like that. Light doesn't have to announce it's way into a room or ask the darkness to leave. It just is. It walks ahead of you, and the darkness rolls back like a tide.' She waved her hand across the room. 'It has to 'cause darkness can't be where light is. — Charles Martin

I guess sometimes it's got to hurt before it can get better."
I nodded. "Hearts are like that. — Charles Martin

deep. Something only God can do. He both broke and filled my heart at the same time. I still don't understand that. Over — Charles Martin

Child," she said placing her head to mine and her callused fingers on my cheek, "you can whip it and beat it senseless, you can drag it through the streets and spin on it, you can even dangle it from a tree, drive spikes trough it, and drain the last breath from it, but in the end, no matter what you do, and no matter how hard you try to kill it, love wins. — Charles Martin

You rescued me when I thought nobody would. When I thought I wasn't worth the effort. You gave me everything and asked for nothing.'
She pressed her face to mine.
'If this is love on the other side of the rescue, then I want to live it. With you. But,'
She shook her head.
'But if you give you to me, then'-
she placed her palm flat across my chest
-'come heavy — Charles Martin

What do you want in a woman, in life?'
I thought a moment ... 'The Rangers ... we began to describe one another in a few simple words: El es muy bueno para cabalgar el rio. Meaning, 'He'll do to ride the river with.' In Texan, it means, 'I'd trust him with my life.'
I scratched my head. 'I want someone to ride the river with. — Charles Martin

Remember, there's an inverse relationship between your head and your heart. If your head swells, your heart shrinks. Tucker, — Charles Martin

Never make it without the compass. In the trees, I'd lose all sense of perspective. Direction. Maybe life is like that. — Charles Martin

The only monster you need to worry about in this life is the one that stares at you from the mirror each morning. You tame him, make friends with him, and the rest of life is nothing you can't handle. — Charles Martin

But maybe life is like that - you never know when something that's been hidden is going to rise up and bite you, or glow with a golden hue. — Charles Martin

If God can make a firefly's butt light up like a star, then anything is possible. Anything. — Charles Martin

This ... living with a broken heart is living half dead, and that doesn't mean you're half alive. It means you're half dead. And ... that's no way to live. — Charles Martin

When we're down and the momentum is stacked against us. Those are the moments when we find out what we're made of. When we learn to trust and lean on each other. — Charles Martin

If manhood is passed down, if it is a mantle cut from the cloth of one and draped across another, it is not done so using titles or accolades. Not hardly. It occurs there - in that spout now resting neck-high - pouring down the spine and into the belly in a language that has never been transcribed, but that every boy on the planet understands and has always understood. — Charles Martin

Football is not played with strong arms and fast feet, it's played with heart. Grow your heart and your arms and feet will follow ... You play long enough and you might find yourself in a place where your arms and feet fail you ... That's when you find out what's in your heart. — Charles Martin

And they ate supper before they said grace ... Oh, um ... she moved into his house, stayed awhile, and then they got married. — Charles Martin

Forgiveness offered -especially when so undeserved - cuts chains off the human heart that no other power in any universe anywhere can rattle much less break ... love did what hatred can not and never will. — Charles Martin

How many times had I wanted to scream the same way? To purge myself and release the pain in my soul. But somehow, I never had. Maybe those who felt free to do so were only those who didn't posses the guilt of having put the pain there in the first place. — Charles Martin

I think when two people really love each other ... way down deep ... like where the souls sleep and dreams happen, where pain can't live 'cause there's nothing for it to feed on ... then a wedding is a bleeding together of those two souls. Like two rivers running together. All that water becoming the same water. Mine did that. — Charles Martin

Most people enter a library and don't hear a thing. Eerie silence. I stand between the shelves and hear ten thousand conversations occurring all at once. Each ushering an invitation. The noise is raucous. — Charles Martin

You can put your boots in the oven, but that doesn't make them biscuits. - You can say whatever you want about something, but that doesn't change what it is. — Charles Martin

Augustine said it best: You stir man to take pleasure in praising You, because You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You. — Charles Martin

What I'm trying to say, and not doing a very good job at, is ... will you ride the river with me? — Charles Martin

While her emotions were very real and they gnawed at her with a raw sincerity, she was listening to something deeper. She was listening to her will, not letting what she felt dictate what she would do. Didn't let it dictate her life. — Charles Martin

But what I knew in my head stayed up there, swirling about the other ten zillion things I had retained. That knowledge informed my actions, what I did and how I did it.
What Emma knew filtered from her head down into her heart and informed who she was - what I have since come to call the Infinite Migration. If my wonderings about life were scientific, bent toward examination and physical discovery, Emma's all leaned toward matters of the heart. While I could understand and explain the physics behind a rainbow, Emma saw the colors. When it came to life, I saw each piece and how they all fit together, and Emma saw the image on the face of the puzzle. And every now and then, she'd walk me through the door into her world and show it to me. — Charles Martin

The books talked about it [the heart] as if it were a sump pump stuck down in the muck and mire of somebody's backyard. Never in all my scientific reading did I encounter anything that talked about a broken heart. Never did I read anything about what the heart felt, how it felt or why it felt. Feeling and knowing weren't important, only understanding — Charles Martin

A lot of dead writers feed my mind with their ever-present whisperings. — Charles Martin

I am speaking from experience when I say that forgiveness offered - especially when so undeserved - cuts chains off the human heart that no other power in any universe anywhere can rattle much less break. — Charles Martin

I sat in that room and realized that you can cut off a finger, cut off a hand, even cut off a leg, but if you take a woman's breast, you are cutting more than just a body part. — Charles Martin

I watched her - the way her shoulders moved with the tilt of her head, how her smile lit up the six people around her, how her hair, tucked behind her ears, framed her face like baby's breath. I thought about how the sound of her heart beating sounded the rhythm for our dance atop the magnolia floor. I wanted to tell her all this, but didn't know how. Just because something is broken doesn't mean it's no good. Doesn't mean you throw it away. It just means it's broken, and broken is okay. I wanted to tell her that broken is still beautiful, still works, still wakes me in the morning, and at the end of every day past and those to come, I can love broken. — Charles Martin

Loving somebody gets better the more you do it. — Charles Martin

Gonna be a real frog-strangling turd-floater. — Charles Martin

Never judge someone by their relatives. — Charles Martin

(Mutt, a mentally ill brother who is setting fire to a load of expensive things from the house he grew up in and was physically abused and neglected in)
"Tuck (mutt's brother is being asked), aren't you going to stop him?"
'Why?'
'Well' - she waved her hand across the house - 'couldn't you two do something good with all this?" ...
"Yeah, but the money we earned wouldn't buy as much therapy as that fire ... — Charles Martin

Sometimes I think that hell is two places: it's a place you end up, but it's also a place that you live before you get there. I don't know if the devil's got horns and a spear for a tail, but I don't think that's the point. The point is that hell is separate from love. If Lucifer knows anything, he knows that. And ever since Emma left, I'd known the same thing. It's a lonely, desolate place. — Charles Martin

You put a new heart in Emma a long time ago, it just wasn't the kind you were thinking of." He laughed to himself. "Hope is an amazing thing. I saw it in Emma, saw it with my own eyes. — Charles Martin

She smiled, tilted her head, and ... have you ever seen video of melting glaciers where huge chunks, the size of skyscrapers, break off and crash into the sea? If hearts could do that, then when her hair slid from behind her ear and down her eyes, and the right side of her lip turned up, I heard my heart crack down the middle. — Charles Martin

Ashley tried to speak. Tried again and still could not find the words. Finally she wiped her eyes, pressed her ear to my chest, and whispered. 'Give me all the pieces. — Charles Martin

Emma once told me that some people spend their whole lives trying to outrun God, maybe get someplace He's never been. She shook her head and smiled, wondering why. Trouble is, she said, they spend a lifetime searching and running, and when they arrive, they find He's already been there. — Charles Martin

My life had been characterized by emptiness the size of the Sahara but there, in that moment, in the back of that truck in the armpit of Nicaragua, I wondered - for the first time - if there wasn't a river flowing down deep inside me. If so, the water that would cleanse me was not water from my head - where I'd learned to rationalize my indifference. But water from my heart. — Charles Martin

Since that moment, I'd bought into the idea that isolation would ease my pain and indifference was the remedy for rejection. Clarity was quick in coming. Isolation is a prison and indifference is a lie. Neither work. — Charles Martin

I'm not leaving you. Not going it alone. Not looking at the memory of you everytime I close my eyes. — Charles Martin

It's so dry the trees are bribing the dogs. — Charles Martin

Well ... letting the cat out of the bag is a lot easier than putting it in. — Charles Martin

A song is a light we shine on others, not a light we shine on us. — Charles Martin

Once a heart breaks ... it doesn't just grow back. It's not a lizard's tail. It's more like a huge stained glass that shattered into a million pieces, and it's not going back together. Least not the way it was. You can mush it all into one piece, but that doesn't make it a window. That makes it a pile of broken colored glass. Shattered hearts don't mend and they don't heal. They just don't work that way. — Charles Martin

the mountain between us is one i cannot climb . — Charles Martin

In the history of mankind, no single person yet has learned to swim by having the strokes explained. At some point, they dive in. — Charles Martin

Time to paint your but white and run with antelope-in English- Stop arguing and do as your told. — Charles Martin

There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread. — Charles Martin

In my previous life, I learned something. I remember seeing it painted on the faces of the kids in the hospital. It is this: All hearts have but one request. One simple, unspoken, undeniable need. One undeniable fear.
To be known.
You can stamp it out. Kill it. Box it up and hem it in. Numb it and close the door. Bury it and nail it shut. Encase it in stone. But eventually, the needs of the heart will tear the door off the hinges, unearth it, and crack the stone. No prison ever built could house it. Those of us who think we can are lying to ourselves. And those next to us.
Hope never dies. — Charles Martin

Hope is not the result of medicine or anything that science has to offer. It is a flower that sprouts and grows when others pour water upon it. I think sometimes that I spent so much time worrying about how to protect and strengthen the flower - even going so far as to graft in a new stem and root system - that I forgot to simply water it. — Charles Martin

Child, the Lord gives you what you need, when you need it. — Charles Martin

If the worst is a possibility, then you keep it on the table. Don't hide from it. Don't run. It can happen. And if and when it does, you need to have thought about it ahead of time. That way you're not crushed when your worst thought becomes your reality. — Charles Martin

I have come to kno one thing without ay shadow of doubt: if anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart — Charles Martin

A change in paperwork [birth certificate] can't erase words stamped on the human heart. — Charles Martin

Inside you is a thing worth putting on a pedestal
worth putting out there for all the world to see. That piece of rock might been knocked around, roughed up a bit, considered scrap, and thrown on the trash pile ... but that's only because they don't know what's on the inside. They can't see like Michaelangelo. 'Cause if they could, they'd know that there's something in there that's just waiting to jump out. Like there is inside you. I'm sorry for the hammer and chisel. I wish life didn't work that way. Just remember ... the velvet cloth ain't far behind. — Charles Martin

Sometimes it's hard to see what could be, what we hope for, through the hurting part of what is, 'cause sometimes stuff hurts so much that we can't see nothing. But then sometimes what we hope for, well, seems like if we hope it long enough, hard enough, deep enough, it becomes what it. — Charles Martin

Some people take all the pain they've been knowing their whole life and pack it down inside them where it festers, oozing pus. Gangrene of the soul. That sore then becomes them. It's what bubbles up. You can smell it. — Charles Martin

Hatred and anger does not kill hatred and anger. — Charles Martin

Forgive your enemies ... it messes with their heads. — Charles Martin

When I find myself wondering what hell must be like, I'm reminded of the terminals in Atlanta. Thousands of people, most of whom don't know one another, crammed into a limited space, all in a hurry and trying desperately to get out. — Charles Martin

The amazing thing about transplantation, aside from the fact that it worked, was that it allowed people to feel again. The thing I liked best about my previous life was the first smile when a patient woke up. Because with that smile, I knew that I hadn't simply given that persona new pump, I had given him or her a new pump that allowed that person to live, to express emotion. It was the smile, even more than the first beat of the heart, that told me it had worked. — Charles Martin

Scientists say that these things evolved this way over millions of years." He shook his head. "That's a bunch of bunk. I don't think an animal can just all-of-a-sudden decide it wants to make light grow out it's butt. What kind of nonsense is that? Animals don't make light." He pointed to the stars. "God does that. I don't know why or how, but I'm pretty sure it's not chance. It's not some haphazard thing he does in his spare time."
He looked at me, and his expression changed from one of wonder to seriousness, to absolute convicton. "Chase, I don't believe in chance." He held up the jar. "This is not chance, neither are the stars." ... "And neither are you. So, if your mind is telling you that God slipped up and might have made one giant mistake when it comes to you, you remember the firefly's butt. — Charles Martin

Love has its own communication. It's the language of the heart, while it has never been transcribed, has no alphabet, and can't be heard or spoken by voice, it is used by every human on the planet. It is written on our souls, scripted by the finger of God, and we can hear, understand, and speak it with perfection long before we open our eyes for the first time. — Charles Martin

down one giant spiral — Charles Martin

Termite, you're young, and I'm not sure if you're going to understand what I'm about to say, but here's the nugget: Without the heart, nothing else matters. She could be the Goddess of Love, you could have all the mind-blowing sex you could physically handle, but when the shooting is over, and you're starting to think about getting a bite to eat, smoking a cigarette, or what you do with her now, you're just lying in bed with a woman who means little more to you than the remote control for your TV. Love is not tool; neither is a woman's heart. What I'm talking about, you won't find in that magazine."
"How would you know? You just said you've only loved one woman. I think you need to test-drive a few cars before you buy one."
"You can buy that lie if you want, but if you're working for a bank, you don't study the counterfeit to know the real thing. You study the real thing to know the counterfeit."
Reese talking to Termite, pg. 109-110 — Charles Martin

Sometimes good judgement comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgement. — Charles Martin

She cried easily. Evidence that she felt much, and most often for other people. A rare and beauty filled gift. — Charles Martin

(Water) ... no matter how wide or deep you cut it ... it has no memory. No scar ... it's all future, no past. — Charles Martin

The library was magical because every time I walked through the door, there were literally thousands of voices ready and willing to have a conversation with me. I walked through the door, stared at all those stacks and bindings, and whispered, Tell me a story. — Charles Martin

From out of your heart, you speak.
-Emma, When Crickets Cry — Charles Martin

I'm one half of a two-piece puzzle. — Charles Martin

Pessimist, are you?"
"I'm a doctor. That makes me an optimist with realistic notions. — Charles Martin

The stone had been rolled away ... That fact alone demands a response. — Charles Martin

Love is worth doing. No matter how much it hurts. — Charles Martin

We're all fallen people in a fallen world.
Where does a man find healing amid so many broken places? How does he find love in the ruins and vine-wrapped shattered pieces of his own soul?
Because love's springing up through the rocks. — Charles Martin

You take the bad with the good, Rise up through it. Live in the mist of it. It's the bad that lets you know ho good the good really is. Don't let the bad leave you thinking like there ain't any good. There is, and lots of it, too. — Charles Martin

He picked up one of Lorna's roses and set it in my lap. "Here." I picked it up and smelled it. He poked me in the shoulder. "See what I mean? Thorns don't stop you from sniffing. Or putting them in a vase on the kitchen table. You work around them ... Cause the rose is worth it ... Think what you'd miss. — Charles Martin

Indifference is the curse of this age. Indifference is evil, and it couldn't be farther from the heart of God.
Afterword - On Digging a Well p. 359 — Charles Martin

Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes. This ... is goodbye. But not out last hello. — Charles Martin

Don't let that girl slip away." A single shake. "Lonely is no way to live." He tapped me on the chest. "And you been lonely since the moment I met you. — Charles Martin

Love is a choice. It's a decision.' She told us, 'It flows into, through, and out of each person like a river. If you try to stop it, it'll sneak around until It finds another heart and breaks through. — Charles Martin

I had this dream that my life was a rolling canvas. Everyday it rolled off the sheet, bleached white, into the beach of my life. Come sunup, I'd begin to paint it with my thoughts and actions. My breathing, my living, and my dying. Some days the pictures pleased me, maybe pleased others, pleased God himself, but some days, some months, even some years, they didn't, and I didn't ever want to look at them again. But the thing is this ... every day, no matter what I'd painted the day before, I got a new canvas, washed white. 'Cause each night the tide rolled in, scrubbed it clean, and receded, taking it's stains with it. And my dreams ... I just stood on the beach and watched all that stuff wash out to sea.- Nothing more than ripples in the water. No canvas is ever stained clean through. Not one. — Charles Martin

If anything in the universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart" ... It derives no benefit from the blood it pumps making it the most unselfish of organs ... it is also the most courageous and faithful." (124, 126) - Reese — Charles Martin

All hearts have but one request. One simple, unspoken, undeniable need. One undeniable fear.
To be known. — Charles Martin

I know I'm not alone and I don't walk alone. That I won't. When the thin whisper of a veil between what I can't see and what I can is pulled back and for one brief second I get a glimpse of what will be. Where the words 'might' and 'hope' intersect. — Charles Martin

He thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow. — Charles Martin

They say God made man, but Sam Colt made them equal. — Charles Martin

Back home, I went to my closet and pulled out the old engineer's transit case stored there. When we were kids, Emma and I had found it in the attic, dusty and empty, and the leather strap used to carry it had a small cut in it. The tag on the top of the wooden-hinged lid read Circa 1907. It was mostly weatherproof and offered plenty of room for the things I valued - like books. — Charles Martin

That's life. You take the bad with the good. Rise up through it. Live in the midst of it. It's the bad that lets you know how good the good really is. Don't let the bad leave you thinking like there ain't no good. There is, and lots of it, too. — Charles Martin

Reese, your books might not tell you this, so I will. Every heart has two parts, the part that pumps and the part that loves. If you're going to spend your life fixing broken hearts, then learn about both. You can't just fix one with no concern for the other. — Charles Martin

Tucker, I want to tell you a secret." She curled my hand into a fist and showed it to me. "Life is a battle, but you can't fight it with your fists." She gently tapped me on the chin with my fist and then put her hand on my chest, " You got to figt it with your heart. — Charles Martin

For all my life, I had stored my love in a a place down inside me that had no outlet. I contained it there. Kept it to myself. Afraid to let it out. Thought if I did, it'd seep out and I'd be left with none. I didn't have much to start with. — Charles Martin

No matter how screwed up the artist might be, there's still the chance that they can produce art that people like us hang on our wall and talk about long after their death. That the sum is greater than one part. That maybe one incident does not a life make. — Charles Martin

Child, you listen to me, and you look me straight in the eyes when I'm talking to you. I may be just old hired help, and a country woman to boot, but I'm a human. And you know what? God thought of me. He actually took the time to dream me up. I may not be much to look at, but what you see first started in the mind of God, so don't stand there and ignore me like I don't exist. You remember that. Miss — Charles Martin

This is love with legs.' My father used to say that you can tell someone you love them until you're blue in the face, but until they see that walked out, they have no idea what it means. Hence, 'love with legs.'" A wide smile spread across her face. "Every day he'd climb out — Charles Martin

More than that, I liked being known, and for the first time in my life, I was known by another. I'm not saying I liked what she knew about me, not proud of the bits and pieces, but somehow she was standing inside my skin and yet I didn't experience shame at her reflection. — Charles Martin

When you laugh ... I want to smile. And when you cry ... ' She brushed the tears off of my face. 'I want the tears to roll down my cheeks.' She shook her head once, whispering, 'I'm not leaving you ... won't. — Charles Martin