Jamie Ford Quotes & Sayings

After a lifetime of nods, frowns and stoic smiles, they were both fluent in emotional shorthand. — Jamie Ford

Some things just can't be put back together. Some things can never be fixed. Two broken pieces can't make a lot of anything anymore. But at least he had the broken pieces. — Jamie Ford

Good Morning, Henry. How's it feel to be a prisoner for a day?' Henry looked at Keiko. 'Best day of my life.' Keiko found her smile all over again. — Jamie Ford

You can't expect children to sew their own gaping wounds without leaving a terrible scar. — Jamie Ford

The mechanics of dying ... — Jamie Ford

His father looked up at him, his mind straining to force his disobedient body into activity. Each movement of his mouth took incredible effort. Just breathing in and out enough to generate sound appeared nearly impossible. Still, his fingers gripped Henry's so slightly it was almost imperceptible And a single phrase slipped out. "Saang jan."
It meant "stranger". As in "You are a stranger to me. — Jamie Ford

She could smell her mother's skin, her lotion, her perfume
her essence. She missed her so much. She clawed at her pillow, wanting to cry, but tears never came, just a swirling riptide of feeling
anger, abandonment, the fear of being alone, and the weight of the emotional millstone still tied around her neck, submerging her further into the murky depths of stinging, biting solitude. She wished she could wail all night. Instead she curled up in the darkness of her bedroom, listening to her racing heartbeat, which eventually slowed, like the ticking of a clock unwound. — Jamie Ford

I try not to live in the past, he thought, but who knows, sometimes the past lives in me. — Jamie Ford

From character Henry Lee in the Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, " He'd learned long ago: perfection isn't what families are all about". Love it! — Jamie Ford

. . .I think a lot of people just don't want to go back. Sometimes that's the best thing to do--to live in the present. — Jamie Ford

It reminded him that time was short, but that beautiful endings could still be found at the end of cold, dreary days. — Jamie Ford

Because the uncomfortable truth is that no one is all bad, or all good. Not mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, or husbands and wives. Life would be much easier if that were the case. Instead, everyone - Charlotte, Willow, Mr. Rigg, even Sister Briganti - was a confusing mixture of love and hate, joy and sorrow, longing and forgetting, misguided truth and painful deception. — Jamie Ford

I had my chance.' He said it, retiring from a lifetime of wanting. 'I had my chance, and sometimes in life, there are no second chances. You look at what you have, not what you miss, and you move forward. — Jamie Ford

Somehow life had become a story problem, and William was horrible at math. — Jamie Ford

We don't get to choose our parents," Sunny said. "If we did, some of us might choose never to be born at all. — Jamie Ford

He had a hard time fitting in. A sense of isolation left over from all those years. Not quite peer pressure. More like peer rejection. — Jamie Ford

Loyalty. We're still loyal to the United States of America. Why? Because we too are Americans. We don't agree, but we will show our loyalty by our obedience. — Jamie Ford

The conversations came as waves, back and forth, tidal shores of separate oceans. — Jamie Ford

I am what you made me, Father. — Jamie Ford

There are people in our lives whom we love, and lose, and unfailingly long for. They orbit our hearts like Halley's Comet, crossing into our universe only once, or if we are lucky, twice in a lifetime. — Jamie Ford

I think I get it now. It doesn't matter how nice home is
it just matters that it feels like home. — Jamie Ford

Henry handed the record to his old friend, who draped it across his chest. His eyes closed as if he were listening to the music play somewhere,sometime long ago. — Jamie Ford

Talking to strangers sounded like talking to no one, which Henry had some firsthand experience in- in real life. It was lonely. Almost as lonely as Lake View Cemetery, where he'd buried Ethel. — Jamie Ford

He'd learned long ago: perfection isn't what families are all about. — Jamie Ford

The library is like a candy store where everything is free. — Jamie Ford

I try not to live in the past ... but ... sometimes the past lives in me — Jamie Ford

He'd do what he always did, find the sweet among the bitter. — Jamie Ford

A young nurse, someone new whom he didn't recognise, came up to Henry and patted him on the arm. "Are you a friend or a family member?" She whispered the question in his ear, trying not to disturb Sheldon.
The question hung there like a beautiful chord, ringing in the air. Henry was Chinese, Sheldon obviously wasn't. They looked nothing alike. Nothing at all. "I'm distant family," Henry said. — Jamie Ford

All good things come to an end. All bad things go on forever. — Jamie Ford

Reality stripped of the armor of optimism was nothing but naked truth - pale and weak. — Jamie Ford

Moths flitted in the porch light, pinging against the bulb, helplessly drawn to something they could never have. — Jamie Ford

The waitress brought a fresh pot of tea, and Marty refilled his father's cup and poured a cup for Samantha. Henry in turn filled Marty's. It was a tradition Henry cherished - never filling your own cup, always filling that of someone else, who would return the favor. — Jamie Ford

Henry, this isn't about us. I mean it is, but they don't define you by the button you wear. They define you by what you do, by what your actions say about you. And coming here, despite your parents, says a lot to them- and me. And they're Americans first. They don't see you as the enemy. They see you as a person. — Jamie Ford

As an author, I get paid to break my own heart on a regular basis. — Jamie Ford

Home is a fairy tale, the kind where children are lost in the woods, found, cooked and eaten. — Jamie Ford

Hope can get you through anything. — Jamie Ford

But choosing to lovingly care for her was like steering a plane into a mountain as gently as possible. The crash is imminent; it's how you spend your time on the way down that counts. — Jamie Ford

The more Henry though about the shabby old knickknacks, the forgotten treasures, the more he wondered if his own broken heart might be found in there, hidden among the unclaimed possessions of another time. Boarded up in the basement of a condemned hotel. Lost, but never forgotten. — Jamie Ford

So Henry found himself stepping off the bus three stops early and wandering over to the Panama Hotel, a place between worlds when he was a child, a place between times now that he was a grown man. — Jamie Ford

People relations is hard business. Hard to keep that going. — Jamie Ford

Marty stayed busy as a chemistry major at Seattle University, — Jamie Ford

If there was anything she had learned from her mother, it was the painful understanding that cages come in all sizes - some even have white picket fences, four walls, and a front door. — Jamie Ford

Father believed in a government of the people, but was weary of who those people were. — Jamie Ford

At least we have the record, Henry thought. A reminder of a place where people didn't seem to care what you looked like, where you were born, or where your family was from. When the music played, it didn't seem to make one lick of difference if your last was Abernathy or Anjoy, Kung or Kobayashi. — Jamie Ford

If someone likes my fiction more for the quality of my prose rather than the quality of my storytelling, I'm doing something wrong. — Jamie Ford

Like so many things Henry had wanted in life
like his father, his marriage, his life
it had arrived a little damaged. Imperfect. But he didn't care, this was all he'd wanted. Something to hope for, and he'd found it. It didn't matter what condition it was in. — Jamie Ford

What his son, Marty, never fully understood was that deep down there was an Ethel-shaped hole in Henry's life, and without her, all he felt was the draft of loneliness, cold and sharp, the years slipping away like blood from a wound that never heals. — Jamie Ford

She'd never felt more alone, even as hundreds of people walked by. No one recognized her, and she began to treasure her anonymity as a gift. — Jamie Ford

Henry was learning that time apart has a way of creating distance- more than mountains and time zone separating them. Real distance, the kind that makes you ache and stop wondering. Longing so bad that it begins to hurt to care so much. — Jamie Ford

The hardest choices in life aren't between what's right and what's wrong but between what's right and what's best. — Jamie Ford

Feelings can only be hidden so long from those who really pay attention.
page 141 — Jamie Ford

Henry looked up and down the empty avenue - no cars or trucks anywhere. No bicycles. No paperboys. No fruit sellers or fish buyers. No flower carts or noodle stands. The streets were vacant, empty - the way he felt inside. There was no one left. — Jamie Ford