Sandra Kring Quotes

For all those who longed to find a best friend and found it in themselves

It's not the length of time we knew someone that makes them so special. It's what they brought into our lives.

The tiny seed knew that in order to grow, it needed to be dropped in dirt, covered in darkness, struggle to reach the light.

Bright Idea #91: When the weather's bad and your lights go out, have a pajama party. Eat till you feel sick, hula-hoop, paint your faces. Catch fireflies, and dance naked in the rain. If you do, then your bare butt will light up like a firefly after it's been let out of a jar.

... I've always said that we have to go on thinking anything's possible. Or else what's the point?

Sometimes we need to go home to find the parts of ourselves we left behind before we can truly become whole.

It seems to me that after someone sweeps across your life like a red-hot flame, peeling back the shutters that sat over your heart and your mind and setting free your sweetest dreams or your worst nightmares, after things cool down you've got two choices. You can either slip back into your old self, your old life, tucking those things you were too scared to look at back into hiding, or you can keep those parts of yourself out until you get so used to them that they don't scare you anymore and they just become a part of who you are.

Be like the single blade of grass. For she too, has been trampled on, mowed down, and hit with such bitterly cold stretches that she had to shut down to survive. Yet still she stands upright with dignity, knowing that she endures, and still she dances with the wind.

What does any of it matter in the end but who we loved and how we loved them.

I think, though, that another shame of war is that when it’s over, a soldier don’t get to leave it behind where he fought it. He’s gotta carry it right back home with him, in his head, and in his heart.

I was standing in that place they call "bittersweet." That place that, if you could find it on a map, would be the mountain that sits between happy and sad. And I thought about how when you stand on that mountain, you can almost feel God's hand on your head and you just know, deep down inside, that even if you dno't understand everything that happened to cause those mixed feelings, you still know there was a good reason for them happening.

If you ever don't know which direction to go in, or you start moving in the right direction but then get lost along the way, don't get rattled and start moving fast, this way and that. Instead, stand still and be quiet. Then you'll be showed which way to go.

And on bad days when you feel like you're stuck on a rock in the middle of nowhere, with no earth beneath you to sink your roots in, and no breeze to push your life forward, reach out to all those who ever gave you love, and believe with the faith of a child.

Right now you're swirlin' in a sad eddy, but you ain't gonna stay stuck in that place forever. Sooner of later, somethin's gonna happen to spit you out of it.

Bright Idea #89: If you ever don't know which direction to go in, or you start moving in the right direction but then get lost along the way, don't get rattled and start moving fast, this way and that. Instead, stand still and be quiet. Then you'll be showed which way to go.

Just as we don’t move without first sorting through what we’ve gathered through the years, throwing away what is broken and can’t be fixed, and what no longer fits, so too, should we do the same with what we’ve mentally gathered, before we move on. So let us do our sorting, throwing away regrets and old hurts, and taking for our journey only the treasures worth keeping: The lessons, the love, the best of what we’ve lived.

Unless they can look into the core of your heart, and see the degree of your passion, or look into the depths of your soul and see the extent of your will, then they have no business telling you what your can or cannot achieve. While they may know the odds, they do not know you. Nor do they know the power of your angels.

You can’t judge a person by what they’re doing, till you know why they’re doing it.

But when your life is broken, you'll let that misery roll by for years, and ignore the side of you that isn't finished.

So there that poor little stick is, caught up in a swirlin' eddy, spinnin' and spinnin' until it's sure it's gonna be stuck in that one spot forever. But then a most amazing thing happens. For no reason that anyone can really be sure of, the water spits that little stick right out of that stuck place and off it goes, floatin' on down the river to find new adventures.

Lucky ain’t a puppy no more and he don’t bark for just any old reason. It takes a mailman, a squirrel, a car, a bird, a blowing leaf, or a tumbling scrap of paper to get him stirred up now.

See them little scales there, how they're closed up tight like window shutters? Underneath 'em are the seeds - flat little things, flimsy as a baby's figernails - with a point at one end. If a fire comes along, the heat is gonna cause those scales to peel back and drop their seeds, while the ground is still scorching hot. Then that tiny seed is gonna burrow in and take root." I was nine years old the summer Freeda and Winnalee Malone rushed across our lives like red-hot flames, peeling back the shutters that sat over our hearts and our minds, setting free our sweetest dreams and our worst nightmares.

We’re in that place called “bittersweet.” That place, I reasoned when I was a girl, that if you could find it on a map, would be the mountain that sits between happy and sad. The place where you can almost feel God’s hand on your head and just know, deep down inside, that there was a good reason for every single thing that happened.

Let someone love you just as you are. As flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you might feel, as unaccomplished as you might think you are, let someone love you just as you are. And let that someone be YOU!

I’d write Bright Idea #84: When you go through a new town that don’t look like much, stop anyway, because you just might find a best friend waiting there.

And, as dumb as I am, I think that these days are gonna last forever.

Now, when you piss off a guy, you don't gotta say you're sorry even after you shoot 'em in the head with bird shot, but when you piss off a girl, saying 'I'm sorry' ain't even good enough. You gotta say it about a hundred times, and you gotta yammer on and on about how dumb you are and how you don't blame 'em if they never speak to you again.

A guy could starve to death when his brother don't come home.

I wouldn't have made it back if it weren't for you, Earwig. I just kept telling myself, every day, every hour, that I had to live through it to come home for you.

Well, Earwig, there's not much about love that does make sense.

Living with regrets over what we did, or didn’t do, is a heavy burden to carry,

I hope the only blue you ever have in your life is the blue in your eyes. But if those sad times come—which they’re bound to—you remember to keep a song in your heart. Making music when you’re happy, it got the power to heal others. But making music when you’re sad, it got the power to heal you.

There’s nothing short of reincarnation that can change poor white trash into something respectable.

was standing in that place they call “bittersweet.” That place that, if you could find it on a map, would be the mountain that sits between happy and sad. And I thought about how when you stand on that mountain, you can almost feel God’s hand on your head and you just know, deep down inside, that even if you don’t understand everything that happened to cause those mixed feelings, you still know there was a good reason for them happening.

I realized that I wasn’t standing in the magic tree anymore. I was standing in that place they call “bittersweet.” That place that, if you could find it on a map, would be the mountain that sits between happy and sad. And I thought about how when you stand on that mountain, you can almost feel God’s hand on your head and you just know, deep down inside, that even if you don’t understand everything that happened to cause those mixed feelings, you still know there was a good reason for them happening.

That you have to go on believing anything’s possible, or else, what’s the point?

Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.