Schaffert 4 Quotes & Sayings

This story is about people, secrets, and time. About people who, not unlike wrapped parcels, cover themselves with layers and layers until they present themselves to the right ones who can unwrap them and see inside. — Cecelia Ahern

A friendship has but one chief adversary and that is envy. It is sired by resentment with the potential consequence of unresolved estrangement." She looked at the woman in conflict and said, "Do not envy her but imagine what it took for her to have what you resent her for. Would you want to embark upon her journey instead of your own to procure it? You notice her abundance but overlook her losses; do not envy her because she would rather have your friendship than your envy." The woman looked at her and nodded in accord, "And how do you do that?" she asked. The woman sighed in reflective thought. "By changing the way you think. — Donna Lynn Hope

You were young, I thought, not once but always before, always always, every day before the day just passed. You were young only minutes ago. — Timothy Schaffert

The Son of God reveals Himself in me, and out of devotion to Him service becomes my everyday way of life. — Oswald Chambers

Kindness to your family costs you almost nothing but affords a wealth of goodwill. — Timothy Schaffert

We live our lives from A-Z, but forget the other 24 letters in between. — Timothy Leary

Even when not in the act of writing Muscatine a letter, I was often composing one in my mind, situating the words just so, plunking one here, then one there, gauging how to sound worthy of his regard. — Timothy Schaffert

We could endlessly reminisce, live in the past to an unhealthy degree, then politely kill each other some winter night before bedtime, stirring poison into our cups of whiskey-spiked chamomile tea, wearing party hats. Then, nervous about our double homicide, we could lie in bed together, holding hands again, frightened and waiting, still wondering, after all these years, if we even believed in our own souls. — Timothy Schaffert

I'm able to lead my life as well as make a film. My wife and my friends and people around me know that I do tend to distance myself a little bit during the making of a film, but I have to, it's a natural part of the process for me because you are indulging in the headspace of somebody else, you are investing in the psychology of somebody else and you are becoming somebody else, and so there isn't enough room for you and that somebody else. — Guy Pearce

A Lutheran church in Nebraska is typically a place where any mad passion for Christ is politely concealed. Men and women recite the various creeds in hypnotic monotone; the hymns, pumped from wheezy organ pipes, are sung with no lilt or musicality. The members of the choirs not only don't dance, they don't sway. That's not to say no one is ever smacked hard with God's love or filled up to the eyeballs with the Holy Spirit, but when you are, you keep it to yourself. (48) — Timothy Schaffert

Love's action. It isn't talk and it never has been. — Pat Conroy

Jeff [the werewolf] cocked his head and stared at me like I had just turned into a were-rabbit. Admittedly, this was a tremendous improvement over wanting to tear me limb from limb. Well, shave my ass and call me a poodle. How the hell did you manage that? — Jim C. Hines

I thought it such a shame that our culture had not devised a way to defang old age. A sophisticated civilization wouldn't ridicule senility, it would elevate it, worship it, wouldn't it? We would train ourselves to see poetry in the nonsense of dementia, to actually look forward to becoming so untethered from the world. We'd make a ceremony of casting off our material goods and confining ourselves to a single room, leaving all our old, abandoned space to someone new, someone young, so that we could die alone, indifferent to our own decay and lost beauty. (127 — Timothy Schaffert

Whatever one wishes to say, there is one noun only by which to express it, one verb only to give it life, one adjective only which will describe it. One must search until one has discovered them, this noun, this verb, this adjective, and never rest content with approximations, never resort to trickery, however happy, or to vulgarism, in order to dodge the difficulty. — Guy De Maupassant

God can change the lowest to the highest, abase the proud, and raise the humble. — Horace

A sudden cloud formation of birds was swallowed up by the moon, and he was just as suddenly penned in by four walls - the demons' pen. — Mo Yan

Desiree the child bride, and her sister Miranda, had gone grave-robbing for a wedding gown. In the north end of the cemetery, among the palatial mausoleums with their broken windows of stained glass where the ivy crept in, was the resting place of a young woman who'd been murdered at the altar while reciting her marital vows. The decaying tombstone, among the cemetery's most envied, was a limestone bride in despair, shoulders as slumped as a mule's, a bouquet of lilies strewn at her feet. Though her murder, by her groom's jealous mother, had been long in the past, everyone knew that her father had had her buried in her gown of lace and silk. — Timothy Schaffert

When you are listening to someone you respect, treat their whispers like screams — Ramit Sethi

He took from his coat pocket a handful of wadded-up cash, as if children had paid him directly with their sweaty clutches of dollar bills. — Timothy Schaffert

After we ate our heaping slice of humble pie, we asked the missus if she could at least serve it up a la mode next time. — Timothy Schaffert

Hester, meanwhile, says we should live all of life back to front. We should be born old and age younger. Our baptism should be a ritual of our funeral. We should die as infants, content in our mothers' arms, having lost all our learning and all sense of disappointment. If only we could die, she says, not knowing we'd ever grieved. — Timothy Schaffert

Simply adored Timothy Schaffert's The Coffins of Little Hope: the voice of Essie, the narrator, is terrific & the last line blew me away. — Nancy Pearl

Kids aren't born to be bullies, they're taught to be bullies. — Matt Bomer

Here lies one who neither flattered nor feared any flesh. — John Knox

But they simply didn't know Sammy in the late hours, all his virulent bedtime prayers whispered away into his folded hands, releasing his worry and anxiety over the sinful so he could sleep well and fight the devil again in the daylight. And, easefully and kindly, he'd hold Abby in his arms, becoming just as lost as everyone else, just as blind in the dark. — Timothy Schaffert

Tiff needed the words on the page to become the voice in her head, her own voice, or an approximation of it, and she needed the paper and the sound of the scratch of her chapped fingertips against it as she fiddled with each page. — Timothy Schaffert

When a thoughtful human being has overcome incentives to vice and is aware of having done his bitter duty, he finds himself in a state that could be called happiness, a state of contentment and peace of mind in which virtue is its own reward. — Immanuel Kant

What's that?"
"He just fell from that tower!"
"Is he dead?"
"He's alive, I think."
Someone bent over me. "Are you alive?"
"I'm alive," I said breathlessly, "and I'm going to have a baby."
"What did he just say?"
"Something about a baby."
"A baby." I said, and then I blacked out. — Liesl Shurtliff