Susan Meissner Quotes & Sayings

we play the cards we've been dealt - as Isabel in Secrets of a Charmed Life says - based on finite knowledge, and while being largely unaware that everyone around us is playing their own cards. — Susan Meissner

Control is an illusion. No one has it. I don't even have it. You can't wish for control; you can only learn to play your part in a world where nothing is truly certain. And you do have a part to play. — Susan Meissner

But life is lived at the moment you are living it, she thought. No one but God in heaven has the benefit of seeing beyond today. — Susan Meissner

... love and fear can sometimes feel the same, but each will lead a person to take different actions. When a decision h as to be made, fear usually motivates me to choose what is best for me, whereas love motivates me to choose what is best for another person. Fear urges me to hang on, white knuckled, to what is mine, while love can actually lead me to let go.... when you hold something you love tightly to your chest for fear of losing it, you actually risk crushing it against you. — Susan Meissner

Fear is not only a leaden foe, but a liar as well. It was not as bad as I thought it would be, sitting there in a London department store on an ordinary Saturday. — Susan Meissner

Which was worse? Mourning the loss of something without knowing you never actually had it, or mourning the loss of what you thought you had and never had at all? — Susan Meissner

There were a thousand words for dreams realized and only one common whimper for hopes interrupted. — Susan Meissner

my life seemed more fully layered because of the choices I had made, both consciously and in ignorance. I — Susan Meissner

He could not know that thoughts are not things you can give or not give. Thoughts are thrust upon you. You can only hope that thoughts that you don't want will tire of you at some point and flutter away. — Susan Meissner

We understand what we want to understand. — Susan Meissner

Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less. — Susan Meissner

No one thinks much about their ability to breathe; they just do it. It's when a person can't breathe, that they suddenly realize they'd been doing something truly marvelous all along. — Susan Meissner

...tired people don't give up. Tired people just take a rest. Rest a bit and try again. — Susan Meissner

We're going to be okay. Lainey isn't the glue that keeps us together. We are. We're the glue. Okay? — Susan Meissner

There are no secrets to a charmed life. There is just the simple truth that you must forgive yourself for only being able to make your own choices, and no one else's. Astounded — Susan Meissner

You don't realize how small your world is when you are a child. Your parents are your east and west, your sun and moon. — Susan Meissner

People treat you differently when they think you are too young to know what you want. — Susan Meissner

Dissecting a book was the same as making sense of life. You have to find a way to interpret life, or you'll go nuts. — Susan Meissner

My choices that terrible morning had been prompted by love. What others had chosen had been prompted by hate. The effects of our choices had spilled onto each other. They always did. — Susan Meissner

Confidence tends to minimize the magnitude of the choice. — Susan Meissner

Sometimes asking God for a reason for something is like asking Him why the sky is blue. There is a complex, scientific reason for it, Claire, but most children, including you, are content with knowing it is blue because it is. If we understood everything about everything, we would have no need for faith. — Susan Meissner

There is a calming aura at the ocean's edge, despite the frothing foam, crashing waves and roaring white noise. The ocean looks the same on your good days and your bad days. Nice to know on the worse of days that there are few things you can utterly count on. P. 107 — Susan Meissner

To her, there was only one shade to every color. She was happy with the one shade. — Susan Meissner

When we trust someone, we believe what they tell us is true. We experience it as being true. It's not the experience itself that empowers us to believe it. It is the trust. — Susan Meissner

Everything beautiful has a story it wants to tell. — Susan Meissner

There is always, always the other road to choose, even if it seems to be nothing more than an unpaved path in the middle of nowhere? — Susan Meissner

Fear is a heaviness you can't wriggle out from under. You must simply find the will to stand with it and start walking. Fear does not start to fade until you take the step that you think you can't take. — Susan Meissner

To love is not to be fragile; it is to be unlocked and open. And when something is open, other things can come in. — Susan Meissner

But if I know anything about time, it is that it stretches to walk with you when you grieve. The rest of the world may zoom past at breakneck speed, but when you are learning to live with loss, time slows to the pace of your breathing. — Susan Meissner

What I hope readers will take away, is that a happy life is not made up of what you have dreamed of, chased after, and achieved, but rather whom you poured your life into, who poured their life into yours, and the difference you've made in the lives of others. Most of the dreams we pursue don't have intrinsic worth, but people always do. — Susan Meissner

They aren't afraid to take risks, but they don't gamble. They are generous but not extravagant. They thrive on beauty of economics, the fact that it is both art and science. — Susan Meissner

Oh, but it's our tears that make us human, Isabel. — Susan Meissner

There is just the simple truth that you must forgive yourself for only being able to make your own choices, and no one else's. — Susan Meissner

Kindness is always motivated by something nobler than just a desire to be kind. — Susan Meissner

Papa said marriage is not kept by affection but by a pledge. Affection does not beget the pledge; the pledge begets the affection. When you share a life and a home and a bed with someone, you become soul mates as surely as cream and effort produce butter ... And so I began to imagine my life with James Luddy. I imagined being butter. — Susan Meissner

Think of England as a very large book. The Cotswolds would be an unfussy chapter in the middle somewhere where there is lots of limestone and even more sheep. — Susan Meissner

A. I want my readers to remember a book of mine after they've turned the last page, partly so they will want to read more from me, but also because I want them to feel that reading it was well worth their time. I guess I want a book that I write to be more than entertainment that is enjoyable for the moment but forgettable as the months go by. I don't make a conscious effort to craft quotable prose when I write, but I do endeavor to pose questions and suggest insights that speak across the pages into a reader's life. For me, that translates into a good reason for having read the book. I always remember a book more fully and longer if I've been so emotionally tugged that I find myself highlighting phrases I don't want to forget. And I usually can't wait for that author's next book! Khaled Hosseini's books are always like that for me. Q. — Susan Meissner

I think this is the danger we face whenever time passes and those who have suffered recover from what flattened them. The generation coming up behind might underestimate or miss completely all that the older generation survived. Q. — Susan Meissner

Sages of the past would say we are - all of us - just imperfect people on a flawed planet who are trying to hold on to what is good and lovely and right. — Susan Meissner

That's what we did, didn't we, Audrey? We learned to be brave when it was easier to be afraid. — Susan Meissner

It was only after time had passed that a person was able to see whether she might have been able to bear the load she was sure had been too heavy. — Susan Meissner

I used to think mercy meant showing kindness to someone who didn't deserve it, as if only the recipient defined the act. The girl in between has learned that mercy is defined by its giver. Our flaws are obvious, yet we are loved and able t love, if we choose, because there is that bit of the divine still smoldering in us. — Susan Meissner

I'm not sure why God made us the way He did ... As to why we're here, well, I think maybe we're here to learn to love Him. To learn to love God and to want to be with Him. I think we're here to cultivate our longing for heaven. '
Luke sighed. 'Heaven,' he said, 'seems like a long, long way off, Dad.'
Jack nodded. 'It does. But I think God gives us glimpses of heaven from time to time to help up nurture the desire ... I see glimpses every spring when the earth renews itself. And sometimes I see glimpses in a worship service when I'm singing about Jesus and all of a sudden I feel like I'm right there in His arms. — Susan Meissner

I don't know how to thank you.'

'You can help someone else down the road, when the time comes.'

Emmy fingered away wetness at her eyes. She knew she would remember that moment for the rest of her life, that moment when someone who barely knew her fulfilled every childhood wish she'd ever had to feel she mattered. — Susan Meissner

Please don't let the unhappiness you knew in the past keep you from accepting happiness now. — Susan Meissner

Truth is a strange companion. It devastates one moment and enthralls the next. But it never deceives. And because of that, in the end, it comforts. — Susan Meissner

I don't see how you can live in a black and white world without becoming ... uncreative. You can't make anything new. Everything already is what it is. — Susan Meissner

I want to learn how to look deep to see what people are really like. I want to be the kind of person who plunges past the surface and seeks to know the inner thoughts of the people I am around. — Susan Meissner

Ah, but what is history? Is it a record of what happened or rather our interpretation of what happened?" "I think it's both," I answer. "It has to be both. What good is remembering an event if you don't remember how it made you feel. How it impacted others. How it made them feel. You would learn nothing and neither would anyone else. — Susan Meissner

Remembering what you want about the past, even if it's not entirely true, keeps you from giving up on the present. — Susan Meissner

You shouldn't imagine things that you haven't a shred of proof happened ... — Susan Meissner

I smiled. "I just wish ... I wish I didn't judge people by what they have or don't have. I wish I could see people for you they are on the inside before I come to any conclusions."
My dad blinked slowly and then said ... "Yes, that would be better than the other, but it still makes you their judge. — Susan Meissner

Sometimes the expectation is better than the fulfillment. — Susan Meissner

The past hadn't been erased just because a new future had been handed it. — Susan Meissner

I am saying, when you make a choice, even if it's a bad one, you've played your hand. You cannot live your life as though you still held all your cards. — Susan Meissner

A happy life is not made up of what you have dreamed of, chased after, and achieved, but rather whom you poured your life into, who poured their life into yours, and the difference you've made in the lives of others. — Susan Meissner

What you can still dream about is often sweeter than the reality. — Susan Meissner

It should always make us happy to say that loving someone and being loved by someone is worth whatever price paid. — Susan Meissner

I think literature reveals more about us than history does. — Susan Meissner

We are born knowing how to be just. And we die knowing we spent a lifetime pretending we didn't. — Susan Meissner

As he mused on the possibilities he became aware of the odor of cigarette smoke. And the sound of muted sobs ... As she tried to stifle her anguish, what came out of her was utterly mournful, the saddest thing Luke had ever heard. He wanted to scramble out of the tree house, climb back into his room, and shut the window. But he was afraid to move. She would hear him.
So he just sat there, hearing the agony of thousands of failed days bleed out of Nell. He put his hands over his ears and closed his eyes. he didn't want to hear her sobbing, didn't want to acknowledge she felt pain - nor that he knew she'd lived through more pain than anyone else he'd ever known. That maybe she had sent Norah and Kieran away because she knew Eleanor's home had to be happier than hers. He didn't want to acknowledge that. He wouldn't be able to hate her then. — Susan Meissner

We moved wordlessly from one room to another, from the room of the dead to the room where time lay in pages everywhere I looked. — Susan Meissner

If I had learned anything from this past year, it is that despair is love's fiercest enemy. — Susan Meissner

She wanted to wake up in the arms of the angels and have them tell her she was worthy of love -- to give it and to have it given to her. — Susan Meissner

Which one of them would make you the most sad if you had to live your life without him? — Susan Meissner

we, as a society, archive our history. We don't want to forget where we've been and what we've seen. The past informs us, and can easily transform us, if we choose to let it. Q. — Susan Meissner

Then surely there is an adversary. There is something opposed to you. Something that desires to defeat you. You want to believe your enemy is the disease. You don't want to believe even for a minute that the enemy is your own body, this weak tent of flesh that cannot stand up against a speck of contagion, this fragile weave of muscle, bone, and soul that also cannot resist the power of flame nor the pull of the ground — Susan Meissner

It is much harder to pretend than it is to simply be who you already are. — Susan Meissner

The frail letters on the first page were barely legible; they looked like whispers, if whispers had form. — Susan Meissner

But heaven seems a place where truth cannot hurt. Here, the truth can be devastating. — Susan Meissner

Thistle House is for people who love and care for one another. We respect one another in this house, Emmeline. We carry one another's burdens. We weep for one another and we laugh with one another. We hold one another by the hand when the lights go out and when the way seems hopeless. We work together and we share the table together and we pray together. No matter how old we are or what we are called. — Susan Meissner

of paper with my name and phone — Susan Meissner

People who are free to choose will choose the best use for whatever it is they possess. Wealth and prosperity begin with the freedom to choose. — Susan Meissner

And though it can be painfully difficult, it can also be unspeakably wonderful. — Susan Meissner

When you only do what is expected of you, you never learn what you would've done had you chosen for yourself. — Susan Meissner

Mr. Dabney could write to — Susan Meissner

I wanted to be wanted. And for the past dozen years I've known firsthand what it's like to be sought after. It's funny how when you get what you've always longed for, sometimes the reason you wanted it no longer exists. — Susan Meissner

Henrietta might have said. — Susan Meissner

Everything in my life suddenly shifted into focus. It was like time froze and I was given a dazzling moment to comprehend the difference between that moment and the one before it. No one made choices for me. I made them. If I took no risks in the choices I'd made, it was because I didn't have the courage to take them or didn't want to live with the consequences. I didn't want to risk disappointment myself. It had been safer to defer than to strike our on my own. — Susan Meissner

We were both shattered. We were broken people who longed to be whole. We thought it was love that was driving us to do what we did. But it wasn't love. It was fear. We were both too afraid of ending up unwanted and unneeded. — Susan Meissner

I don't know very many people who can piece together eloquent prayers when their souls are wounded. Words don't come at those times, but tears do. I have always thought of my tears as prayers. — Susan Meissner

Fear is worse than pain, I think. Pain is centralized, identifiable, and wanes as you wait. Fear is a heaviness you can't wriggle out from under. You must simply find the will to stand with it and start walking. Fear does not start to fade until you take the step that you think you can't. — Susan Meissner

The person who completes your life is not so much the person who shares all the years of your existence, but rather the person who made your life worth living, no matter how long or short a time you were given to spend with them. — Susan Meissner

Into the main part of the store. Off to get Kendal, I mouthed to Celine, and she nodded. I stepped out into the September afternoon. Behind me, Eighty-ninth Street stretched several blocks to Riverside Park, a favorite place of mine and Kendal's. Just ahead the intersection at Broadway sparkled with a steady stream of cars and our neighboring retailers' windows. A man walking his dog nodded a wordless hello, and a mom with a baby in a stroller bent to pop a pacifier back into her unhappy child's mouth. A delivery truck double-parked and the car behind it honked its disproval. The air held only a hint that summer was waning. September used to be my favorite month. I liked the way it sweetly bade the summer pastels away and showered the Yard's shelves with auburn, mocha, and every shade of red. September brought in the serious quilters, those who loved spending — Susan Meissner

Do not choose to abandon love because you are afraid that it will crush you. Love is the only true constant in a fragile world. — Susan Meissner

uncomplicated things — Susan Meissner

Love was both the softest edge and the sharpest edge of what made life real. — Susan Meissner