Patti Callahan Henry Quotes & Sayings

You don't always need proof to know something. — Patti Callahan Henry

There were some things that needed to be said even if the person you were saying them to didn't understand; words that must be released from their trapped place where their flapping to get out could cause internal damage. — Patti Callahan Henry

Riley's smile saturated her entire face with beauty. This was the sister Maisy had left all those years ago. The sister with the full laugh and the face of an angel who was unaware of her beauty. Gone was the sister who pulled her hair back into a baseball cap. — Patti Callahan Henry

It is not about how it ends; it is about the journey. The full story. You have to know the full story to care about or know the ending. — Patti Callahan Henry

People say it all the time
'follow your heart.' What are we supposed to do
take our heart out and walk around behind it
follow it down the sidewalk to the mall? Your feet will lead you to your heart. Ha!
Maybe it just means you should know your heart, because if you know it, you might do what it says to do. I don't think it means you do whatever you damn well please. I don't think the heart speaks very loudly either
just tosses you hints and whispers. — Patti Callahan Henry

There are trials and mistakes and even wars along the path of marriage. — Patti Callahan Henry

The choices we make when we're broken, are sometimes the most awful of all our choices. — Patti Callahan Henry

Sometimes we know who we want to be and what we want to do long ... long before we know how to get there. — Patti Callahan Henry

Let the story settle inside you. Let it move and twist around until you see what it has to say to you. — Patti Callahan Henry

You'll let him talk you out of your dreams. That's what love does sometimes- talks you out of your dreams." "Not me," Katie said. "Jack would talk me into my dreams. — Patti Callahan Henry

Sometimes we tell our stories and sometimes our stories tell us. — Patti Callahan Henry

There are always consequences to the truth. — Patti Callahan Henry

Still, the night feels restless underneath me — Patti Callahan Henry

The written word held a power she almost revered: to be able to write so as to influence the hearts and minds of other readers seemed nothing short of a miracle. — Patti Callahan Henry

I believe it's a miracle in life when you find people who care about and desire the same things you do, and creativity does that
brings those people together in one place. — Patti Callahan Henry

I can't go back to what we had in childhood. I can't relive those times, retrace my tracks and undo what's been done. It's not like writing a book and rewriting the ending to make it happier. — Patti Callahan Henry

I hope you never understand what it is to know that all you believed is wrong
sorely wrong. — Patti Callahan Henry

A broken heart, too much cold beer, ocean waves and a willing man were never a good combination, no matter what the country songs said. — Patti Callahan Henry

The slow turning of his affection wasn't completed that night, or the next morning, but the beginning of Mack and Maisy's summer romance began at the exact moment that Mack and Riley's ended. Of course Riley pretended it had never begun, that his preoccupation with Maisy was of no concern to her. They'd been friends and always would be. Yet inside, her heart broke in places that remained permanently jagged, places the most casual graze of memory catches in pain. — Patti Callahan Henry

Unearthing the truth was akin to creating it; something new and profound appeared where it hadn't been before. — Patti Callahan Henry

No Matter how you try to cover up smoke, it must come out. — Patti Callahan Henry

Edges of the ocean. The water is what ties us together, yes? You at one edge, me at the other, but the same ocean, the same water. — Patti Callahan Henry

The right thing at the wrong time is never the right thing. — Patti Callahan Henry

Souls bound together can't be forever torn apart by distance and neither by death. — Patti Callahan Henry

Be careful what you believe - it is who you are. — Patti Callahan Henry

Over time, hidden truths morph in the dark soil of deceit into something much worse. — Patti Callahan Henry

She allowed the sweet thrill of hearing Mack Logan's voice, even in the background, run through her before she dismissed it as another childhood fantasy. When they'd been best friends as children, she'd had an unbounded belief in mermaids and fairies, in fairytales and nature's mysteries. She'd believed she could fly with Peter Pan, breathe underwater, walk without touching the ground. And she believed Mack Logan loved her. Reality had a way of ruining a girl's dreams. — Patti Callahan Henry

Those are the facts. It's easy to believe in facts, my dear. To believe in the story you need faith. Tell me the story as you experienced it. — Patti Callahan Henry

Story is a way to find grace in the chaos. — Patti Callahan Henry

And that is the choice everyone has. They can wish for what they want in their life or they can face the truth. But sometimes you cant have both. — Patti Callahan Henry

Cheating and lying aren't struggles, they're reasons to break up. — Patti Callahan Henry

We have to know the truth about the past to discover out future. — Patti Callahan Henry

Grief wraps around people, takes them to a place they would not go otherwise. — Patti Callahan Henry

Memory is a cloudy, disjointed thing - like disconnected dreams with images scattered and thrown to settle where they please. — Patti Callahan Henry

Their words faded into the darkness as if they were spoken and unspoken at the same time; as if they were important and yet not at all, as if they were two people talking or maybe just one.
Darkness, she understood later, easily confused the meaning of words, of skin touching skin. In their remaining summers together she tried to find that oneness again. When it was all over,
when youth ended and he chose Maisy, she understood the lesson from the dock that night: she could never again call her feelings of intimacy and oneness love. Nor would she be fooled again into believing that her love was returned, that a boy felt more for her than friendship. — Patti Callahan Henry

Riley sensed the shift before it actually happened: Mack turning his smile, his focus on Maisy. She felt the desperate desire to rewind time, to undo the act of Maisy running toward them. Even before the change occurred, Riley knew that it would happen eventually, so why not now? Riley was bland gray compared to Maisy's radiant light. — Patti Callahan Henry

If only it were so easy to pick up the broken pieces of life, glue them back together, and cover them with paint like nothing had ever happened. — Patti Callahan Henry

You think it is so different because you live here in this time, in this place, because I'm from the far side of the sea. But we are attached by the water between us. It is the same tide and moon, the same sea, love, fear, losing, and death. Love does not change with time. The love that fills us and empties us, that clips our wings so that
we must decide whether to learn to fly after that. To love or to fear. — Patti Callahan Henry

I DID my life - one thing to do after another, always something else to do. Because you don't need a heart to DO, but you do need one to live. — Patti Callahan Henry

You need to take care of the root in order to heal the tree. - Gullah Proverb — Patti Callahan Henry

This is now and forever - the moment everyone must have, the moment that encompasses all other moments; now and before, now and after: all time. — Patti Callahan Henry

This is the thing we must guard against: that others' expectations, especially our families', do not become our own. — Patti Callahan Henry

I was never without a book, just in case there were empty moments to slip into a life that wasn't mine. — Patti Callahan Henry

Stories are always braided together - one affecting the other. — Patti Callahan Henry

When you know you love someone, when you know it's finally the right time, you don't just wait around for the right words, you just say the sentences even if they're all mixed up and imperfect. — Patti Callahan Henry