Hutchison Quotes

Some people stay broken. Some pick up the pieces and put them back together with all the sharp edges showing.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!

I think a trauma doesn’t stop just because you’ve been rescued.

Not making a choice is a choice. Neutrality is a concept, not a fact.

Beauty loses its meaning when you’re surrounded by too much of it.

My secrets are old friends; I would feel like a poor friend if I abandoned them now.

Listen to what isn’t being said.

What choice are you making, Desmond?” “I don’t think I’m making any choice right now.” “Then you’re automatically making the wrong ones.” He straightened, mouth open to protest, but I held up my hand. “Not making a choice is a choice. Neutrality is a concept, not a fact. No one actually gets to live their lives that way.

I’m not a fake person; I’m carefully and genuinely handcrafted.

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

The trouble with sociopaths, really, is that you never know where they draw their boundaries.

Some wanted the freedom to be anyone they wanted, some of us wanted the freedom to be left alone.

Scars mean we survived something, even when the wounds still hurt.

If you don’t look at the bad thing, the bad thing can’t see you, right?

The gifts we give say as much about us as the gifts we get and keep,

I’m constitutionally incapable of trusting people who treat their books that badly.

If you’ve seen enough, you just look older, no matter what the rest of your face looks like.

Our choices make us who we are,

And that stupid little girl stood in the winter and kept lighting matches to catch glimpses of families that weren’t—could never be—hers and froze to death in those harsh moments of reality between matches, because even though matches can burn, they’re light, not heat.

And promises, once made, must be kept, and if later you regret them, you should have been more careful in making them.

Let's call me a shadow child, overlooked rather than broken. I'm the teddy bear gathering dust bunnies under the bed, not the one-legged soldier.

How do you put yourself back together when the pieces permanently lost are the only reasons anyone's looking at you?

You seem to have this strange image of me as a lost child, like I’ve just been thrown on the side of the road like garbage, or roadkill, but kids like me? We’re not lost. We may be the only ones who never are. We always know exactly where we are and where we can go. And where we can’t.

So not only was I self-sufficient, I came to have a pretty low opinion of most people’s intelligence.

Sometimes you can look at a wedding and realize with a certain sense of resignation that any children produced in that marriage will inevitably be fucked up and fucked over. It’s a fact, not a sense of foreboding so much as a grim acceptance that these two people should not—but definitely will—reproduce.

I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him.

A promise is a rope around the neck.

What wasn’t known was created, what wasn’t created eventually ceased to matter.

it’s okay to not be okay.

Nothing happens until you decide.

The carousel’s over now,” he tells her quietly. “This time your family is waiting for you.

We shouldn’t have to fix ourselves if we don’t want to. We shouldn’t have to be strong or brave or hopeful or any such bullshit. Mum has always emphatically stated that it’s okay to not be okay. We don’t owe that to anyone else.

Some people stay broken, others put themselves back together with all the sharp bits showing?

Words never mean anything. Look beneath them.

She was incapable of insulting us, because the words have to have meaning to hurt.

Like beauty, desperation and fear were as common as breathing.

But why am I sad?" "Because doors close, and we can still miss what was on the other side even if we choose to walk away.

What I have is a healthy sense of spite and a determination that someday I’m going to learn how to do this thing called living. Maybe that’s as far as justice can stretch.

At night, the creature that was the Garden peeled back its synthetic skin to show the skeleton beneath.

Hold the bottle up to the light; you will see your dreams are always at the bottom.

We heal, mostly, but even scars can bleed.

The ones who’ll set the world on fire if they have to burn. They sound like my kind of people.

In terror she spoke, letting sink her wings till they trailed in the dust—in agony sobbed, letting sink her plumes till they trailed in the dust—till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust. But my wings couldn’t move and I couldn’t fly, and I couldn’t even cry. All that was left to me was the terror and the agony and the sorrow.

It’s about the eyes, really. If you’ve seen enough, you just look older, no matter what the rest of your face looks like.

If they look past the glitter, they have to see everything else, and no one wants to do that. No one wants to see the ugliness of a thing.

No matter what happens, she will never let the world break her permanently.

Scars fade. They don't disappear. It isn't right. We live with the memories; why do we have to live with the scars as well?

My name is Rachel,” she whispered against my skin. “Rachel Young. Will you remember?

It isn't impossible to heal from that, but it leaves scars. It changes the way you look at people, how far you can trust or let people in. It changes your habits, even your desires and dreams. It changes who you are, and no matter how much you struggle back toward that place, that person you started as, you never actually get there. Some change is irreversible.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who was scared of the dark. Which was silly, even she knew that. There was nothing in the dark to hurt you that wasn't also in the light. You just couldn't see it coming.

and I thought how fucking unfair it was that he made us butterflies, of all things. Real butterflies could fly away, out of reach. The Gardener’s Butterflies could only ever fall, and that but rarely.

There is nothing resting about that bitch face.

Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness.

I took my pills, but the pills are like words, they don't always mean anything even when they should.

Love makes us liars and we call it protection.

What I've finally begun to understand is that madness allows for an appalling honesty.

The only thing that made me truly different was that I was the only one who never cried.

When everything is spiraling out of control, no one can dig in and hold steady. Not really. They lash out, desperate to grab onto anything. They lash out.

Anything tries to destroy them, they’ll burn the world to take it down with them.

Beautiful things are short-lived, he told me the first time we met. He made sure of that, and then he strove to give his Butterflies a strange breed of immortality

If you expect to be overlooked or forgotten, you’re always at least a little surprised when someone remembers you. You’re always outside understanding those strange creatures who actually expect people to remember and come back.

But my wings couldn’t move and I couldn’t fly, and I couldn’t even cry.

You’re comparing the FBI to Hitler?” “No, I’m engaging in a discussion about perspective and moral relativity.

I cannot marry the facts of William Shakespeare to his verse: Other men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man is in wide contrast.

Pain is only for the best when it ends.

I want someone to speak of me someday.

There is an unreasonable joy to be had from the observation of small birds going about their bright, oblivious business

I could be the little match girl and strike my illusions against the wall, lost in the warmth until the glow faded and left me back in the Garden.

The life of Shakespeare is a fine mystery and I tremble every day lest something turn up.

Sadness and grief aren’t the same thing. It’s why they have different words. Maybe it’s a subtle distinction, but we don’t keep a word in a language if it doesn’t still have a purpose of its own. Synonyms are never exact things.

You seem to have this strange image of me as a lost child, like I've just been thrown on the side of the road like garbage or roadkill. But kids like me, we're not lost; we may be the only ones who never are.

It was sick and wrong and profoundly twisted, and yet somehow it made us feel a lot better.

Twelve years old, Priya, after the worst days of your life, angry and scared and grieving, you threw a teddy bear at my head and told me not to be such a fucking coward.

Acknowledging the need, rationing the impulse.

Sometimes love is naming the faults so they can't be forgotten.

little girl stood in the winter and kept lighting matches to catch glimpses of families that weren’t—could never be—hers and froze to death in

We were a fucked-up family, but a family nonetheless.

We bear responsibility for our tempers, most especially when someone is harmed by accident. Shorter tempers require greater care from those burdened with them.

Finding out about this . . . having it all come out . . . it would kill my mother.” I shrugged. “Give it enough time and it’ll kill me too. Cowardice may be our natural state but it’s still a choice. Every day you know about the Garden and don’t call the police or let us go, you’re making that same choice again and again. It is what it is, Desmond. You just don’t get to pretend anymore.

By being “educated” I mean having such an apprehension of the contours of the map of what has been written in the past, as to see instinctively where everything belongs, and approximately where anything new is likely to belong; it means, furthermore, being able to allow for all the books one has not read and the things one does not understand – it means some understanding of one’s own ignorance.

The public steals tragedies from victims. It sounds strange, I know, but I think you may be one of the few people who’ll understand what I mean by that. These things happened to us, to our loved ones, but it hits the news and suddenly everyone with a TV or computer feels like they’re entitled to our reactions and recoveries. They’re not. It takes a while to really believe it, but you owe them nothing.

Taki and Karen had it, their daughter and her wife had it. But each time I saw it, I knew I was in the presence of something extraordinary, something that not everyone found or was capable of recognizing and sustaining.

The Valley of Unrest,’” she repeats. “It’s a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. ‘They had gone unto the wars, trusting to the mild-eyed stars, nightly, from their azure towers, to keep watch above the flowers’ . . . I like Poe. There’s something refreshing about a man who’s so unabashedly morose.

Do we have a perfect job? No. Do we do a perfect job? No. It isn’t possible. But we do our job, and at the end of the day, we do a hell of a lot more good than harm. Inara’s good at deflecting; you can’t let her get under your skin.

there’s a difference between being unashamed of your scars and putting them out for everyone to comment on.

Not making a choice is a choice. Neutrality is a concept, not a fact. No one actually gets to live their lives that way.

Guilt doesn’t have to make sense; it just is.

sometimes it’s the quest that holds the meaning, not the reward.

If I weren't a ghost tied to my dead mother in the lake--if I had things I wanted to do and a person I wanted to be--I think I would hate it here.

I am a living wound upon the soul.

New York has so much history, but everyone in it just wants to know about the future.

When silence is a living thing, it can be a friend, sometimes even a comfort.

Being a victim isn’t something that disappears as soon as you’re rescued. It doesn’t vanish the moment the people who hurt you are taken into custody. That sense of it, that awareness of being not just victimized but a victim, it sticks to your bones for years, even decades. That sense of the thing can cause as much damage as the original trauma, as life goes on.

Inara is quieter than Bliss, not shy or withdrawn, just . . . more patient, I suppose. Bliss explores a situation by lighting a match and letting it explode. Inara watches first, observes. She waits to speak until she knows what she wants to say and has a healthy guess as to how others will react to it.

I take pictures of everything anyway, even though they’ll mostly turn out crap on the phone, because taking pictures is just what I do. The world seems a little less frightening, somehow, if I can keep the camera lens between me and everything else.

Dane and Horatio are the only ones who respect my decisions, who give me the space to make them, even if I never say what they are. They don't make them for me and simply assume that I'll obey, that I'll follow along with no will and no mind as I so often do.

You really think broken children care about justice?” “Wouldn’t you?” “Never really did, no. Justice is a faulty thing at the best of times, and it doesn’t actually fix anything.” “Would you say that if you’d gotten justice as a child?” That not-quite-smile, bitter and gone too fast. “And what would I have needed justice for?” “My life’s work, and you think I won’t recognize a broken child when she sits in front of me?

Seeing your own demons reflected back at you, it creates a safe place to just be wounded. It gives permission, in a way, to not be okay. You go to your brothers (and sisters) and not only will they watch over you when you are clearly incapable of doing so yourself, they will never tell you to be anything other than what you are, even if on that particular day what you are is a collapsing wreck of a human being. “Maybe,

Someone is just dead!” said the little girl; for her old grandmother, the only person who had loved her, and who was now no more, had told her, that when a star falls, a soul ascends to God. And that stupid little girl stood in the winter and kept lighting matches to catch glimpses of families that weren’t—could never be—hers and froze to death in those harsh moments of reality between matches, because even though matches can burn, they’re light, not heat.

I knew better than that. Like throwing away well-intentioned phone numbers, I knew better than to ask for things I clearly couldn’t have. “Can this one camera be disabled without another one going up in its place?” I asked promptly, and watched shock pass across his shadowed face. “No cameras, no mics?” "That’s it?” “It would be nice to have one place that’s genuinely private,” I explained with a shrug. It almost felt strange to have my hair shifting across my back and shoulders with the gesture. “You can see us everywhere else we go, even watch us on the toilet if you had a wish to. Having just a single place devoid of cameras would be beneficial. A mental-health exercise, in a way.” He watched me for a long time before answering. “Something that benefits all of you.” “Yes.” “I tell you to ask for anything, and you ask for something that benefits all of you.” “It benefits me too.” He laughed again and reached for me, pulling me against his chest so he could kiss me. His hands moved over the fastenings of my dress, and as he lowered me to the mist-damp stone, I closed my eyes and let my thoughts drift off to Annabel Lee and her grave in the kingdom by the sea. I didn’t think angels would ever be jealous of me.