Christina Baker Kline Quotes

You have to try to take what life throws at you with grace and equanimity.

It's as if she assumes everything will go right, and when it doesn't - which, of course, is pretty often - she is surprised and affronted.

I remember her words to me when I left school: Your mind will be your comfort. It is, sometimes. And sometimes it isn't.

That man would have chipped away at your heart bit by bit until there was nothing left. It may have been bruised, but at least it's whole.

I know all too well how it is when the beautiful visions you've been fed don't match up with reality.

She pauses, hand on her hip. "Yes,

This life of ours can feel an awful lot like waiting.

Easier to assume that people have it out for you than to be disappointed when they don't come through.

You can't find peace until you find all the pieces. She wants to help Vivian find some kind of peace, elusive and fleeting as it may be.

I'll play your fucking game. But I don't have to play by your rules.

It?" "Friday, April fourth, ma'am." She coughs. Then she doubles over and coughs

The people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our most ordinary moments.

I think you're used to being observed but not really ... seen.

As a novelist, I have always been interested in how people come to terms with difficult, life-altering events.

That the quickest relief will come in forgetting.

Having the book-club army embrace you is a gift that keeps giving for years.

The twists and turns of your life can be so unexpected, and that's a good thing to learn.

If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead.

Forgive me if I'm wrong. But are you-were you-did you come here on a train from New York about ten years ago?

My mother was one of the most dynamic and brilliant women I have ever known. She was also mercurial and unfocused.

I feel a joy so strong it's almost painful - a knife's edge of joy.

It's human nature to want to think the best of others, but if you listen carefully, people will always tell you who they are.

out and folding it against

The reading part of her feels private, between her and the characters in a book.

As a week. She's been spanked with a spatula, slapped across

You are only as interesting as you are useful to someone

I have come to think that's where Heaven is, a place in the memories of other where our best selves live

A man whose mother won't let him lift a finger is ruined for a wife." The

It's hard to say what's in my head. It's been a long time since anyone cared to ask.

I want to say, Christina, that you are ... unusual. And somehow..." her voice trails off. "Your mind-- your curiosity-- will be your comfort.

The first twenty-three years of my life are the ones that shaped me, and the fact

It is a terrible thing to find the love of your life.... You know too well what you're missing when it's gone.

Irish lace, hanging in the windows, filters the afternoon light, softening the lines on her face.

mixed together - because Dina refuses to acknowledge

And anyway, how do you talk about losing everything?

How strange, I think - that I am in a place my parents have never been and will never see. How strange that I am here and they are gone.

Look, I don't mean to be rude, but you could never have a normal life, even if that's what you thought you wanted. You and me, we're not 'normal.

notice." The false cheer in her voice is evidence of how

If you really want to know me, I said, we'll have to start with the witches.

I ... am left with the lingering feeling that the places we go in our minds to find comfort have little to do with where our bodies go.

The stark gray sky and bare tree limbs feel more suited to her than the uncomplicated promise of sunny spring days.

My mother was a passionate, complicated, sometimes fierce woman.

For years I'd understood that publishing in paperback was the kiss of death.

Ever since I was a little girl I had wanted to be

I am acutely aware that like a slip of paper in the wind, something in his nature eludes my grasp.

Upright and do right makes all right.

Without even thinking about it, my son uses technology in almost everything he does, large and small.

It's painful to hold out hope for the things that once brought you joy. You have to find ways to make yourself forget.

Time constricts and flattens, you know. It's not evenly weighted. Certain moments linger in the mind and others disappear.

It is good to test your limits now and then, learn what the body is capable of, what you can endure.

A lady wants to feel pretty, no matter how much money she has.

I have found that the biggest moments in life, the ones that change everything, usually catch you by surprise.

I often work and write in coffee shops, observing the baristas and eavesdropping on interesting conversations.

If you're disorganized, you risk losing everything.

When I was seventeen I went to college to escape my father's impotent rage and my mother's infinite capacity for forgiveness.

Be totaled; we can't afford a new one.

Pusillanimous. Talisman.

She knows from experience that tough and weird is preferable to pathetic and vulnerable, and she wears her Goth persona like armor.

To get it all done I have to dim my brain, turn it down by notches like the flat-turn knob on a gas lantern, leaving only a nub of flame.

(How quickly, with a slight twist in perception, do people's strengths become flaws!)

Tough and weird is preferable to pathetic and vulnerable ...

I like meeting and connecting with readers.

You can't find peace until you fin fall the pieces.

We are headed toward the unknown, and we have no choice but to sit quietly in our hard seats and let ourselves be taken there.

What she wants most - what she truly yearns for - is what any of us want: to be seen.

Know what a symbol is? ... Shit that stands for shit.

My heart is shattered, an all that's left are jagged shards.

Radiation is relentless: my protocol is five days a week, 33 sessions altogether.

Many people, for many reasons, feel rootless - but orphans and abandoned or abused children have particular cause.

Only the good Lord knows what's going to happen, and He ain't telling.

I like the assumption that everyone is trying his best, and we should all just be kind to each other.

Every decision I make is determined solely by the spark and limitations of my own perspective

I am learning to pretend, to smile and nod, to display

Story. (And anyway, Lori doesn't ask "why" questions. She's only

What I couldn't see is that sometimes the healing is not in the forgetting but in the letting go.

My parents are a bedrock. And I have three complex, strong, and funny sisters who inspire and sustain me.

I read once that the act of observing changes the nature of what is observed.

So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason - to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?

My entire life has felt like chance. Random moments of loss and connection. This is the first one that feels, instead, like fate.

We took away their country and their means of support. It was for this and against this that they made war. Could anyone expect less?

Servants, men in top hats and morning coats, shop girls in

He squints at me. "Except for the red hair and freckles, you look okay. You'll be fine and dandy sitting at the table with a napkin on your lap.

It is marvelous to be young on a big city street.

This isn't bickering. This is classic mother-daughter communications. I've been reading up on it.

neighborhood, the place I left each

She feels like a circus clown who wakes up one morning and no longer wants to glue on the red rubber nose.

Test your limits. Learn what you can endure.

This is like telling a person who has leapt off a cliff to be careful. I am already in midair.

I think a lot of readers are looking for a book they can talk about.

You're not shy. You just like who you like.

Words are both my vocation and my avocation - reading, writing, editing, teaching.

Upright and do right make all right.

It's a bitter nostalgia from a moment not yet passed.

And so it is that you learn how to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside.

Life's small details are the ones that interest me, anyway. The big questions are too hard to parse.

I am not glad she is dead, but I am not sorry she is gone.

Something inexorable seeds itself in the place of your origin. You can never escape the bonds of family history, no matter how far you travel.

I've come to think that's what heaven is- a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on.

I can't imagine why you didn't memorize this route on the

You got to learn to take what people are willing to give.