Lori Lansens Quotes & Sayings

If you don't like something about yourself, change it. If you're OK with it, you gotta own it. There's nothing in between. — Lori Lansens

You don't know if you ruined your kids or if they were born that way. — Lori Lansens

Uncle Stash said you didn't have to be crazy to to do something stupid, just young. — Lori Lansens

Winning the lottery is winning the lottery. It's highly unlikely and very unusual. — Lori Lansens

Feeling the wind rush in through the broken window, Mary thought of how Gooch would say, "You're letting out the heat," when she kept the door open, and "You're letting out the cold," when her nose was in the Kenmore. It struck her that there must be some other door left open through which she'd let out Gooch. — Lori Lansens

Regrets serve their purpose. You'll see. — Lori Lansens

Wake in bed and know, because dreams are not true, that the sun will be shining and it will not storm today. — Lori Lansens

In some ways, Mary thought, Irma lived her whole life anxious to get things over with, as if she knew the end of her story all along, and didn't feel the middle pages worth the effort of a read. — Lori Lansens

Aunt Lovey used to tell me that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed a writer's voice. 'Read,' she'd say, 'and if you have a writer's voice, one day it will shout out, 'I can do that too! — Lori Lansens

When you get older you think of sadness in a different way. You don't judge it so harshly. — Lori Lansens

On the farm, in our first-floor bedroom, my sister and I were sheltered in the essence of normal. We were not hidden, but unseen. The orange farmhouse was our castle, our kingdom the fields around, and the shallow creek that bisected our property the sea we crossed to find adventure. — Lori Lansens

The drugstore is a wonderful place to see all manner of ailments. — Lori Lansens

What is it about sadness that can be so fulfilling? — Lori Lansens

I feel, holding books, accommodating their weight and breathing their dust, an abiding love. I trust them, in a way that I can't trust my computer, though I couldn't do without it. Books are matter. My books matter. What would I have done through these years without the library and all its lovely books? — Lori Lansens

The city, no matter how small, is corrupt and unrepentant, while the sun shines brighter in the country, making people more wholesome. — Lori Lansens

There will be sway. — Lori Lansens

I'm not alone in having obese people in my circle and in my family. I have loved morbidly obese people, and I don't approach obesity with revulsion or judgment but with empathy and compassion. — Lori Lansens

In those dangerous narrows grew children who knew too much too young but, sadly, always seemed to learn too little too late. — Lori Lansens

Regrets. Sure you think about regrets, but it's not regret for the things you've done that occupy you, as much as it is a longing for the things you'll never have a chance to do. — Lori Lansens

The final picture in the album was of Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash, their black-and-white wedding photo. I hated that their picture came last, because it felt like they were saying goodbye. — Lori Lansens

When you stand outside, you look around and find that the people you're with live on the fringes. — Lori Lansens

The climb speaks to our character, but the view, I think, to our souls — Lori Lansens

Before she closed her eyes tonight, Rose said she regretted that she has not done something heroic in her life. Well, it's not like she can suddenly climb a tree and save a cat, or go to medical school and begin some important cancer research. But Rose has been my sister. I think that's heroic. — Lori Lansens

If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars though they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead. — Lori Lansens

You're so dehydrated I can hear you blink. — Lori Lansens

How cruel it must be for a man to live past his soul. — Lori Lansens

Art isn't a product. It's an experience — Lori Lansens

Mary reached into her vinyl purse and extracted one of the novels, each of whose covers had promised laughter and tears. She began to read and, finding a masterful storyteller behind its pages, was instantly and gratefully transported to another place. — Lori Lansens

I hum some secret place into being, thinking of this other me, the one that only I can see, a girl called She, who is not We, a girl who I will never be. — Lori Lansens

It was only out on the cold street ... that Riley began to feel the full loss of his father. Poppa, he thought, Oh Poppa. He'd grieved him since Christmas when he first took ill ... but it was here now, an empty place where once had been Poppa. A quietness to replace Poppa's good voice. A gust of wind that said he was there, not on earth, but in the air. Riley knew he would not be the same man again, for Riley had been Poppa's son and was now only his survivor. — Lori Lansens

The most successful people in the most impossible situations are the ones that are sure they're gonna get out of it, and they go on thinking that, even if they die trying. — Lori Lansens

We're seeing a decline in religion in North America but, I hope, a rise in individual spirituality. Whatever that means to people. — Lori Lansens

Write,' she said, 'as if you'll never be read. That way you'll be sure to tell the truth. — Lori Lansens

Resilience, thy name is Devine. — Lori Lansens

Because I live in California now, I find my musings really being centered in this world. — Lori Lansens

The strangest thing about strange things is that they're only strange when you hear about them or think about them later, but never when you're living them. — Lori Lansens

It's not that you like being sad, but you start to see the value of it. You don't judge sadness so harshly. — Lori Lansens

I was in the emergency room twice with heart palpitations and panic attacks. As one of my actor friends pointed out: your body doesn't know that you're making art. You think about struggle and challenge and you imagine yourself weighing 302 pounds and being restricted and in despair. Your body doesn't know that that's not the case. — Lori Lansens

My father used to say there are two kinds of people: the noticers and the noticed — Lori Lansens

Evidence tells that black and Latina woman are more accepting of curves, and that's a good thing. — Lori Lansens

I have had, like most women, a lifelong preoccupation with my weight. My first published short story was a love story between an elderly man and a very young morbidity obese woman. — Lori Lansens

I have never looked into my sister's eyes. I have never bathed alone. I have never stood in the grass at night and raised my arms to the beguiling moon. I've never used an airplane bathroom. Or worn a hat. Or been kissed like that. I've never driven a car. Or slept through the night. Never a private talk. Or a solo walk. I've never climbed a tree. Or faded into a crowd. So many things I've never done, but oh, how I've been loved. And, if such things were to be, I'd live a thousand lives as me, to be loved so exponentially. — Lori Lansens

Funny how you can measure time by pets that were not even your own. — Lori Lansens

In sleep, my sister and I found a common breath. In dreams, we knew the moon. — Lori Lansens

Her changing perception of time had altered the sum of her reflections. — Lori Lansens

the only thing left to do is love — Lori Lansens

The world's waistlines are expanding, but it's an epidemic of a larger issue in terms of our bounty having become our burden. — Lori Lansens

I can't exactly say why I've chosen to write about the things that I am writing about. There are doubtless better stories from my life that I am missing, events and escapades I am not wise enough to know were important. If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars that they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead.
p 179 — Lori Lansens

I wondered who would teach me, or if a boy could learn on his won, what it means to be a man. — Lori Lansens

When we talk about God, I think what most of us mean is some greater thing, some higher power that can help us access our own strength or give us strength. — Lori Lansens

How could she have been so ungrateful? She envied the French singer who regretted nothing. She regretted all. — Lori Lansens

The beach was empty and dark but she couldn't hear her fear over the call of the surf. — Lori Lansens

I felt the weight of my father's failures and the absence of my mother and I wondered who would teach me, or if a guy could learn on his own, what it means to be a man. — Lori Lansens

I was three inches taller but he could smell my fear. — Lori Lansens

When I grew up, all of our news, weather, and sports came from America. The people where I grew up rooted for American teams as opposed to Canadian teams. — Lori Lansens

I would not have dreamed back then, could never have imagined, that one day I would be a childless mother too. — Lori Lansens