Carolyn Parkhurst Quotes

The conclusion I have reached is that, above all, dogs are witnesses. They are allowed access to our most private moments. They are there when we think we are alone. Think of what they could tell us. They sit on the laps of presidents. They see acts of love and violence, quarrels and feuds, and the secret play of children. If they could tell us everything they have seen, all of the gaps of our lives would stitch themselves together.

It's not the content of our dreams that gives our second heart its dark color; it's the thoughts that go through our heads in those wakeful moments when sleep won't come. And those are the things we never tell anyone at all.

Suicide is just a moment, Lexy told me. This is how she described it to me. For just a moment, it doesn't matter that you've got people who love you and the sun is shining and there's a movie coming out this weekend that you've been dying to see. It hits you all of a sudden that nothing is ever going to be okay, ever, and you kind of dare yourself. You pick up a knife and press it gently to your skin, you look out a nineteenth-story window and you think, I could just do it. I could just do it. And most of the time, you look at the height and you get scared, or you think about the poor people on the sidewalk below - what if there are kids coming home from school and they have to spend the rest of their lives trying to forget this terrible thing you're going to make them see? And the moment's over. You think about how sad it would've been if you never got to see that movie, and you look at your dog and wonder who would've taken care of her if you had gone. And you go back to normal. But you keep it there in your mind. Even if you never take yourself up on it, it gives you a kind of comfort to know that the day is yours to choose. You tuck it away in your brain like sour candy tucked in your cheek, and the puckering memory it leaves behind, the rough pleasure of running your tongue over its strange terrain, is exactly the same.... The day was hers to choose, and perhaps in that treetop moment when she looked down and saw the yard, the world, her life, spread out below her, perhaps she chose to plunge toward it headlong. Perhaps she saw before her a lifetime of walking on the ruined earth and chose instead a single moment in the air

It's true, isn't it, that each of us has two hearts? The secret heart, curled behind like a fist, living gnarled and shrunken beneath the plain, open one we use every day.

It's gratifying to know that you've appeared in someone else's dreams. It's proof that you exist, in a way, proof that you have substance and value outside the walls of your own mind.

For so long, it was just my secret. It burned inside me, and I felt like I was carrying something important, something that made me who I was and made me different from everybody else. I took it with me everywhere, and there was never a moment when I wasn't aware of it. It was like I was totally awake, like I could feel every nerve ending in my body. Sometimes my skin would almost hurt from the force of it, that's how strong it was. Like my whole body was buzzing or something. I felt almost, I don't know, noble, like a medieval knight or something, carrying this secret love around with me.

Because for most of us, suicide is a moment we'll never choose. It's only for people like Lexy, who know they might choose eventually, who believe they have a choice to make.

Perhaps she saw before her a lifetime of walking on the ruined earth and chose instead a single moment in the air.

There would be hard times, but what did I care if we had hard times? The branches of my love were wide, and they caught the rain and the snow. We would be okay, the two of us together. We would be okay.

I can't take one breath, not one single breath, without knowing that I love you.

I remember my wife in white.' It just made people weep to hear it...Everybody just thought it was the saddest sentence that was ever written. And it didn't matter if I never wrote another word. This one sentence had put an end to the need for any future sentences. I had said it all.

How can it be, I wondered, that we can be lying in bed next to a person we love wholly and helplessly, a person we love more than our own breath, and still ache to think of the one who caused us pain all those years ago? It's the betrayal of this second heart of ours, its flesh tied off like a fingertip twined tightly round with a single hair, blue-tinged from lack of blood. The shameful squeeze of it.

I'm not going to feel guilty for wanting the things that everyone wants.

It was September, and there was a crackly feeling to the air. I was saying something that was making her laugh, and I couldn't stop looking at her. It was a little bit chilly, and her cheeks were pink, and her dark hair was flowing around her face. All I wanted for the rest of my life was to keep making her laugh like that. Sometimes our arms brushed against each other as we walked, and it was like I could feel the touch for minutes after it happened.

It is not the content of our dreams that gives our second heart is dark color: it's the thoughts that go through our heads in those wakeful moments when sleep won't come. And those are the things we never tell anyone at all.

The conclusion I have reached is that, above all, dogs are witnesses.

You are my finest knight

I wake up in that state of grief when you can tell you've been mourning even in your sleep.

And sitting here now, with all of Lexy's dreams in my lap, I realize there are things about her I will never know. It's not the content of our dreams that gives our second heart its dark color; it's the thoughts that go through our heads in those wakeful moments when sleep won't come. And those are the things we never tell anyone at all.

I sing of a woman with ink on her hands and pictures hidden beneath her hair. I sing of a dog with skin like velvet pushed the wrong way.I sing of the shape a fallen body makes in the dirt beneath a tree, and I sing of an ordinary man who is wanted to know things no human being could tell him.This is the true beginning.

All this to say: I am forty-three years old. I may yet live another forty. What do I do with those years? How do I fill them without Lexy? When I come to tell the story of my life, there will be a line, creased and blurred and soft with age, where she stops. If I win the lottery, if I father a child, if I lose the use of my legs, it will be after she has finished knowing me. "When I get to Heaven", my grandmother used to say, widowed at thirty-nine, "your grandfather won't even recognize me.

All I wanted for the rest of my life was to keep making her laugh like that.

The simplest thing that can be said about any person, any relationship, is that it's not simple at all.

There's no book that absolutely everyone loves.

Sometimes I wonder how we can be so sure what it is God sees. How arrogant we are, I sometimes think, to imagine there's someone watching us every minute. To think our every action matters that much.

We never know, do we, what our neighbors might be doing behind their fences, what love affairs and bloody rituals might be taking place right next door? The world is a more interesting place that we ever think.

Go on,"Lexy said. "What do you want to be today?

Your only job is creating a life that contains a story worth telling.

I have heard that sometimes when a person has an operation to transplant someone else's heart or liver or kidney into his body, his tastes in foods change, or his favorite colors, as if the organ has brought with it some memory of its life before, as if it holds within it a whole past that must find a place within its new host. This is the way I carry Lexy inside me. Since the moment she took up residency within me, she has lent her own color to the way I see and hear and taste, so that by now I can barely distinguish between the world as it seemed before and the way it seems now. I cannot say what air tasted like before I knew her or how the city smelled as I walked its streets at night. I have only one tongue in my head and one pair of eyes, and I stopped being able to trust them a long time ago.

This is happening; this is not fiction. And the thing about life? It doesn't have texture at all. Go ahead, feel the space around you. Do it now. See? It's nothing but air.

Imagine that your child is born with wings.

The tragedy of puppies, taken from their families, all of them, never to see each other again. This is the sadness we inflict on the beasts we love.

I've always known that the best part of writing occurs before you've picked up a pen. When a story exists only in your mind, its potential is infinite; it's only when you start pinning words to paper that it becomes less than perfect. You have to make your choices, set your limits. Start whittling away at the cosmos, and don't stop until you've narrowed it down to a single, ordinary speck of dirt. And in the end, what you've made is not nearly as glorious as what you've thrown away.

I remember my wife in white. I remember her walking toward me on our wedding day, a bouquet of red flowers in her hand, and I remember her turning away from me in anger, her body stiff as a stone. I remember the sound of her breath as she slept. I remember the way her body felt in my arms. I remember, always I remember, that she brought solace to my life as well as grief. That for every dark moment we shared between us, there was a moment of such brightness I almost could not bear to look at it head-on. I try to remember the woman she was and not the woman I have built out of spare parts to comfort me in my mourning. And I find, more and more, as the days go by and the balm of my forgiveness washes over the cracked and parched surface of my heart, I find that remembering her as she was is a gift I can give us both.

It's not the content of out dreams that gives our second heart its dark color; it's the thoughts that go through our heads in those wakeful moments when sleep won't come. And those are the things we never tell anyone at all.

Walking out of the store with my parrot & sushi, I feel hideous, like everything I've done must be written on my skin. I walk through the streets of Tokyo with my cameraman behind me, knowing that anyone who looks at me will be able to see myshame, my sorrow, my regrets as ugly as scars. -Cassie

Happiness, as it exists in the wild—as opposed to those artificially constructed moments like weddings and birthday parties, where it’s gathered into careful piles—is not smooth. Happiness in the real world is mostly just resilience and a willingness to arch oneself toward optimism. To believe that people are more good than bad. To believe that the waves carrying you are neither friendly nor malicious, and to know that you’re less likely to drown if you stop struggling against them.

You may know that a cascade of water can wear away stone, but you can't predict what shape the rock will take at any given moment.

I lie on my bed and slip into a troubled, bereft sleep full of falling women and the barking of dogs always out of sight.

It may not be terribly fruitful to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t satisfying.

A crisis of faith doesn’t have to be about God. You can have a crisis of faith about dust mites and food additives that cause behavioral changes.

Life is never what you expect it to be. Sex has more to do with salt than sweetness. The sky is white as often as it's blue.

The unexpected thing, the miraculous thing, is when a car that's been shattered in a crash, that's been left in the rain to rust for years at a time, can be coaxed to growl to a start and slowly begin rolling down the hill.

Ah, the Gilligan's Island conundrum: why were the Howells on a crappy three-hour excursion cruise in the first place, when they could've been on their diamond-encrusted yacht? And why did they bring so many clothes?" -Riley

Anyway, I thought, it's wishful thinking, all this talk of ghosts. If the dead wandered among us, their spirits still present on this earth, what need would we have for grief? Scary as it is, it's what we hope for. How else can we go on living?

That's the fundamental flaw in the illusion that writers like to maintain, the idea that we can craft anything approaching the truth. No matter how richly we imagine, no matter how vividly we set the scene, we never come close to the unambiguous realness of the moment itself.

It occurs to me for the first time that Lorelei is getting older—she must be eight years old by now—and that I may not have unlimited time to conduct my research. Or to enjoy the quiet pleasure of her company. I will lose her someday, that much is certain, and it makes me ache to think of it. But, as all dog owners must, I put the thought quickly out of my mind.

Imagine if our lives were treated as carefully as the rest of history. Imagine if we were documented as conscientiously, preserved as gently. Each birth at least as important as a naval victory. Each death a national tragedy. There are plenty of ways to remember someone: a park bench, a colossus, an epic poem. Your only job is creating a life that contains a story worth telling.

Perhaps, and this is where my breath catches in my throat, perhaps she let herself fall. The day was hers to choose and perhaps in that treetop moment when she looked down and saw the yard, the world, her life, spread out below her, perhaps she chose to plunge toward it headlong. Perhaps she saw before her a lifetime of walking on the ruined earth and chose, instead, a single moment in the air.

Pareidolia describes the human tendency to find meaning where there is none. Take the man in the moon, for example; we raise our eyes, and there, in lifeless markings of bedrock and basalt, we find a human face. We’re hardwired to look for patterns in the Rorschach of the natural world: a woman’s reclining form in the curve of a mountain range, the Virgin Mary in a water stain on a concrete wall. We want the world to be both known and mysterious. We’re looking for evidence of God, or maybe just for company. (53)

There’s an analogy I came up with once for an interviewer who asked me how much of my material was autobiographical,” Octavia says. “I said that the life experience of a fiction writer is like butter in cookie dough: it’s a crucial part of flavor and texture — you certainly couldn’t leave it out — but if you’ve done it right, it can’t be discerned as a separate element. There shouldn't be a place that anyone can point to and say, There--she's talking about her miscarriage, or Look--he wrote that because his wife had an affair

But whatever that fatal elixir is, that mixture of circumstance and temperament that leads a person to the edge of death and sometimes back again, it flowed through Lexy's body like blood... She laughed when she told me these things, making fun of the drama of her teen angst, but I could see that it hurt her to remember. It was during those afternoons in bed that she began to pull out her hair. She wanted, she said, to make her pain tangible, to feel something on the outside. As she lined up the strands of hair on the sheet next to her, she told me, she felt a sense of accomplishment.

There’s a startling fact that you read somewhere: after airbags became standard in cars, statisticians noticed that the incidence of severe leg injuries increased dramatically. Think about it for a minute: Why should that be? Is there something about the way airbags inflate during collision that targets the passengers’ legs, makes them more vulnerable? No. It’s a matter of checks and balances. Before airbags, there were certain accidents that would have killed you; you’d be a corpse in the morgue, and no one would be paying any attention to your legs. When we change the way we do things—the way we shop for groceries or take care of our children or protect ourselves from harm—we set other changes in motion, for good or for ill. And it may be years before we figure out what we’ve done.

past. For a minute, you have the ability to be in two places at once: you’re forty and pissed at your husband and too old to be in this bar, but you’re also twelve and sitting in your childhood living room, watching MTV like you’re going to be tested on it. Like it might actually teach you something. You’re practically taking notes. The way they’re dancing, the way the women have applied their lipstick: this is one way a life can be. In a few minutes, Van Halen or Cyndi Lauper will show you another way, and you’ll see what you think of that one.

Tilly might say that it’s not fair that it’s the presidents and generals, the famous scholars and civic leaders, who get the monuments. But she’s also too young to see the way that we’re all acting out the same stories, over and over again. We are all, at any given moment, Adam or Eve, Bathsheba or Odysseus or Scarlett O’Hara. The Little Match Girl or someone you read about in the newspaper. Seen from a great distance, it might appear that none of us is ever doing anything new at all.

They’re too young to understand how much of life is shaped by never the same.

The conclusion I have reached is that, above all, dogs are witnesses. They are allowed access to our most private moments. They are there when we think we are alone.

You picture a garden gone to seed: moss growing on the surface of our spleens, vines squeezing our kidneys. Tiny mushrooms spreading across the linings of our intestines.

a couple of fountains and four giant slabs of marble containing Roosevelt quotes. They’re labeled “Nature,” “Youth,” “The State,” and “Manhood.” “They put those up in the ’60s,” says Tilly. “I think it was kind of a sexist decade.” You

You believe, fervently, that falling in love is the one holy mystery in an otherwise secular life.

How is it that we ever manage to forget how brief and fragile our lives are? The time will come when your body will stop working. Your mind—now in constant movement, containing vast galaxies—will no longer think. Of course, you know this; you, as much as anyone else, are subject to those brief, terrifying moments of clarity. Bright bursts of anxiety, blooming and swelling. But is that all you’re supposed to do with that knowledge—fear it? Or are you supposed to hold on to it, use it to figure out how you want to move through the wor

Like every parent, you have to teach your girl to live a contradiction, to be exceptional and ordinary, all at the same time.

I'm talking about narratives of tragedy and pathos so painful, so compelling, that they seem to catch inside you on a tiny hook you didn't even know you'd hung.

Read my story, walk through these woods, and when you get to the other side, you may not even realize that you're carrying something out that you didn't have when you went in. A little tick of an idea, clinging to your scalp or hidden in a fold of skin. Somewhere out of sight. By the time you discover it, it's already begun to prey on you; perhaps it's merely gouged your flesh, or perhaps it's already begun to nibble away at your central nervous system.