Laura McHugh Quotes & Sayings

Nobody special had come around to replace Duane, and she was moping, going to bed alone every night with a box of Velveeta and a fork. — Laura McHugh

I took in the thick night air, the sweet smell of honeysuckle, the chirping of frogs, to impress the moment in the folds of my memory, preserve it like a flower between pages of a book. To remember: This is how it feels to be happy. — Laura McHugh

I'd told the condensed version of my life story so many times over the years that I could recite it without emotion. When I said the words out loud, they felt like they belonged to someone else. — Laura McHugh

I hadn't taken into account how a place becomes part of you, claims you for its own. — Laura McHugh

It occurred to her then that there was a reason age drained the pleasure out of life, slowly stripping away all the things you enjoyed or took for granted. It was so you wouldn't need convincing when the time came. You'd be ready, because everything good in life was gone. — Laura McHugh

I was starting to think you were one kind of person until a situation arose that required you to be something else. — Laura McHugh

You grow up feeling the weight of blood, of family. There's no forsaking kin. But you can't help when kin forsakes you or when strangers come to be family. — Laura McHugh

Gabby was right that we all had secrets, secrets that would hurt other people or expose us in ways we didn't want to be exposed. — Laura McHugh

We all had dreams, regrets, accomplishments, people we'd loved and disappointed, and at some point, for each of us, those earthly concerns would fall away, our lives replaced in an instant by darkness or--if you believed--light. Sometimes deaths came too soon, sometimes not soon enough, and only for certain sinners did it come at a time of one's choosing. — Laura McHugh

Just because you don't see the devil doesn't mean he isn't there. He doesn't carry a pitchfork. He hides in plain sight. — Laura McHugh

She'd make a game of it where she'd relax all the little bits of her body, starting with her fingers and toes and working in toward the center. She had to make herself limp and draw the hurt and want into a tight core inside, each time adding another layer to that core, so that if somebody came along and cut her open, they'd find inside a shining, perfect pearl, hard as any Willy Wonka jawbreaker. — Laura McHugh

... nostalgia was once thought to be a mental illness or a physical affliction; for me, it was both. — Laura McHugh

...my mom always telling me that a man with clean nails hides his dirt on the inside. — Laura McHugh

But there was always so much we didn't know about people, lurking right below the surface where we couldn't see it. — Laura McHugh

I used to play a game where I imagined that someone had abandoned me in a strange place & I had to find my way back home-I thought I could do it blind, the same way a lost dog might trek a thousand miles to return to its owner, relying on some mysterious instinct that drew the heart back to where it belonged. — Laura McHugh