When We Believed In Mermaids Quotes

it’s not about comparison, as my counselor used to say. My pain is my pain.

Your quest is powerful. You needn’t apologize for the space it takes.

There are seasons of darkness, yes? Loss and sadness all around.” He tightens his grip. “But if you are patient, the circle turns, and then there is happiness all around, everything good, everyone happy.” He flings a hand out, palm up, as if scattering glitter. “My friend, he just forgot that happiness is part of living too.

A girl without a mother who protects her is a girl at the mercy of the world.

Resistance will break you. Kill you. The only way to survive is to let go.

Every girl needs a mother who protects her with a savage fury.

When I saw you, I recognized you, like I’ve been waiting, all this time, for you to show up. And there you were.

I’ve carried a torch of hatred for my mother for so long now that it’s hard to even see beyond the straw woman I’ve made of her.

Life is always a mixed bag.

Not everything is a disaster waiting to happen,

Paris

There are seasons of darkness, yes? Loss and sadness all around.” He tightens his grip. “But if you are patient, the circle turns, and then there is happiness all around, everything good, everyone happy.” He flings a hand out, palm up, as if scattering glitter.

Love is not always destructive,” he says quietly, and slides a finger up my shin. “Sometimes love creates.

A lifetime of secrets and lies later, I drive through the dark back to my neighborhood.

Maybe I don’t have to choose between Dylan as a villain and Dylan as my beloved hero. Maybe he was both. Maybe Josie was—is—both too. Heroine and villain. Maybe we all are.

I remember when my sister and I thought there were jewels in the ocean, dancing on top of each swell.

But it’s not about comparison, as my counselor used to say. My pain is my pain.

I have a million questions, but they’ll be so much easier to answer if I don’t have to answer them alone.

We drank hot chocolate and sat on the beach in our finery, and we were mermaids with our mermaid mother.

problems, however big they might seem at the moment, are dew in an ocean.

That is a little happy. Not big, not the kind that fills you up and makes you want to laugh.

Damn, Josie. How did you get so bad?” She lets go of a sad, short laugh. “A day at a time.

She was the worst mother of all time. She was the best mother of all time.

There are seasons of darkness, yes? Loss and sadness all around.” He tightens his grip. “But if you are patient, the circle turns, and then there is happiness all around, everything good, everyone happy.

This happens all the time. Anyone who has lost somebody they love has experienced it—the head in the crowd on a busy street, the person at the grocery store who moves just like her. The rush to catch up, so relieved that she is actually still alive . . . Only to be crushed when the imposter turns around and the face is wrong. The eyes. The lips.

My father’s retellings could be dramatic and my mother would often chide him, especially before bedtime when she feared he’d give me nightmares. But his stories never frightened me. I was an overly brash child who delighted in believing every stray cat a djinn, every shadow beneath the waves a mermaid. But it went beyond imaginings. I’d grown up feeling terribly unusual, out of place and never at peace with the fate afforded young girls. In a hidden corner of my heart, I nursed embarrassing dreams. That I was not the child of my parents, but the daughter of a tribe of female warriors who flew upon winged horses. Or I was heir to a hidden sea kingdom below the waves, and the whispered sighs I heard from the water when we sailed and the strange lightning in the distance were not natural weather phenomena but magic, my true family calling to me.

My sister has been dead for nearly fifteen years

that uneven scar that runs from her hairline, straight through her eyebrow, and into her temple. It was a miracle she didn’t lose her eye.

See? Love found you.” “It broke my heart, though.” “Sure.” He lifts his shoulders. “Me too. But you don’t die. You just . . . begin again.

Jandals,” I repeat. “Like sandals?” “Japanese sandals.

Of course I’ll miss him. We can stay in touch through email, and in a few weeks, we’ll forget the urgency of now.

With adulthood comes discipline, however, so I give the ice cream my full attention, aware that I’m using food to soothe my aching heart and not caring a bit.

I haven’t had a lot of time to fall in love.” “Psssht. Love does not need time.

This is why we have funerals. We desperately need to see the truth for ourselves, see that loved one’s face, even if it’s marred. Otherwise, it’s just too hard to believe.

The only things I’d ever really wanted—peace, calm, predictability. My childhood had been drama enough for one life.

but fairy tales are dark for a reason. Kids know that life isn’t all sweetness and light. They know.

In Spanish, we say alma gemela. Soul twin.

Many things, but I have learned to just carry one book, or my bag starts to weigh too much for me to lift!

My marriage was long ago. It’s to me like a story I read once.

do know that it’s hard to be the children of parents who are obsessed with each other.

I think of my admission that I haven’t had much happiness, and it suddenly seems ridiculous. What am I waiting for?

I do know that it’s hard to be the children of parents who are obsessed with each other.

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

At this point, I have more pens and ink than I could possibly use in three lifetimes, but that’s not the point.

For a faint, foolish moment, I wonder if she is looking toward me too, across time, across the miles, somehow sensing that I am still alive.

I took myself back, made myself over, became a woman I am proud of.

The Mermaid Song”: “We there did espy a fair pretty maid, With a comb and a glass in her hand, her hand, her hand, With a comb and a glass in her hand.

Guilt wants erasing in a big bottle of ice-cold vodka. Regret asks for amends,

I just kiss him. In the rain. On a ferry halfway around the world. Kiss him, and kiss him, and kiss him.

Over the years, she’s created an urbane but kind shell that lets little of her true self leak through.

Sleep is my superpower.

you can fall in love with someone by looking into their eyes for thirty seconds.

I have never really been able to fully warm up, as is often true of the children of alcoholics after so many years of neglect, I

lifelong, die-hard reader,

Love is not always destructive,

Vermicelli alla siracusana

It is absolutely love. For me, certainly.

I thought maybe there was somebody on the planet who knew what I knew, that a smiling face didn’t always mean well.

I take a breath, think of those days, and again find myself telling him the truth. Maybe it’s him, or maybe it’s just time to tell someone.

The house was sliding down the cliff long before the earthquake hit, and everywhere the walls were cracked, the floors uneven and full of tripping hazards.

Because we spent so much time in the sun, we were tanned as dark as varnished cedar, and if he was the most beautiful boy on the beach, I was growing into the most beautiful girl.

I like to read. I just don’t like to work hard to read. I like books that take me away the same way television or the movies do.

Resistance will break you. Kill you. The only way to survive is to let go. The world swirls, up and down, around, for endless moments.

I’d love that.” Instead of rushing in with questions or comments, she waits for me to keep talking, a listening trick she learned at AA that would have made my childhood ten thousand times better.

When you leaped over the railing, my heart squeezed so hard I could not breathe, because what if”—now he touches my ear, my temple, my wet hair, and pulls me closer—“what if I had lost the chance?

Oh, I do not want to like him so much. Lust, yes. Not like. I don’t know him at all, but in this gesture I feel the heart of a lion, big and inclusive and wise. It tips open the closed doors of my life.

As naturally as if we’ve been together a hundred years, Javier picks up my hand and laces his fingers through mine. And even though it’s a little sweaty and I’m not really the hand-holding type, I let him.

For a moment, I look at all the disasters happening around the world, and my drama seems ridiculous and small, all of my own doing. But it’s not about comparison, as my counselor used to say. My pain is my pain.

For a moment, he only looks at me. “Your quest is powerful. You needn’t apologize for the space it takes.” He covers the hand he’s holding with his other. “That you take. You are important too. Not only your sister.

One of the things I love about Hobo is that he is company at night, curling up against the crook of my knees or creeping onto my pillow to rest his face against my head, as if we are two cats. I ache for him at those moments, and I

Shakespeare, lodged in my head from one of the only classes I ever attended regularly in high school, runs through my mind: “Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

A line of Shakespeare, lodged in my head from one of the only classes I ever attended regularly in high school, runs through my mind: “Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

Your . . . ?” “My soul mate,” I finish, and a welter of tears swells in my eyes. I have to swallow hard to control them. “Like we’ve known each other always.” “In Spanish, we say alma gemela. Soul twin.” The words sting the raw space of my heart.

Do you want to know the secret of my transformation?” “Yes, please,” I whisper. “I learned to play guitar.” “And sing.” He nods. “And sing. And then, it was like a magic spell. I could sing and play, and nobody called me the little blind pig anymore

The human body is a delicate, amazing creation. It takes almost nothing to completely destroy it, and yet it takes a lot. Most of us manage to stay on the planet, in our bodies, for seventy or eighty years, all of us amassing scars along the way, each one with a story.

What did you love as a child?” “Books,” he says with a laugh. “I loved to read more than anything. My father grew angry with me—‘Javier, you need to run! You need to play with the other boys. Go outside.’” He lifts a shoulder. “I only wanted to lie in the grass and think about other worlds, other places.

I suddenly wish that I could sit with him like this many times, over many years. I can almost see a ghostly version of us, sitting in this same place, a decade or two out. His hair will silver by then, but those long lashes will still frame his lovely dark eyes, and he will still eat like this, reverently.

See? Love found you.” “It broke my heart, though.” “Sure.” He lifts his shoulders. “Me too. But you don’t die. You just . . . begin again.” He settles his hand on my thigh. I take a sip of wine, aware of the winding promise between us. It feels dangerous and rich. “How many times?” “As many times as life offers.

It fades relatively quickly, just a flash and gone. All these years, you’d think I’d finally get over the PTSD. But it doesn’t seem to work like that. My therapist says I spent so much time drinking and drugging away my trauma that it’s just going to take a long time to work through it all. And even she knows only the tip of the iceberg.

My sister,” I reply without hesitation. “We had our own little world, just the two of us—it was full of magic and beautiful things.” “Mm,” he says, moving his palm lightly over mine. “What magic?” “Mountain Dew was an actual magic elixir. Do you know Mountain Dew?” He nods. “There were kitchen fairies and mermaids who moved things around to make the grown-ups crazy.

I do have a bad habit,” he says. “of falling in love. With regularity and to spectacular effect. You see, it never goes well.” I wonder if this conversation makes him think of our kiss, but then, I was the one who kissed him. He’d only kissed back. “As charming as you are, how can that be?” I say. He laughs again. “That’s what my sister Taryn always says. She tells me that I remind her of her late husband. Which makes some sense, since I would be his half brother. But it’s also alarming, because she’s the one who murdered him.” Much as when he spoke about Madoc, it’s strange how fond Oak can sound when he tells me a horrifying thing a member of his family has done. “Whom have you fallen in love with?” I ask. “Well, there was you,” the prince says. “When we were children.” “Me?” I ask incredulously. “You didn’t know?” He appears to be merry in the face of my astonishment. “Oh yes. Though you were a year my senior, and it was hopeless, I absolutely mooned over you. When you were gone from Court, I refused any food but tea and toast for a month.” I cannot help snorting over the sheer absurdity of his statement. He puts a hand to my heart. “Ah, and now you laugh. It is my curse to adore cruel women. He cannot expect me to believe he had real feelings. “Stop with your games.” “Very well,” he says. “Shall we go to the next? Her name was Lara, a mortal at the school I attended when I lived with my eldest sister and her girlfriend. Sometimes Lara and I would climb into the crook of one of the maple trees and share sandwiches. But she had a villainous friend, who implicated me in a piece of gossip—which resulted in Lara stabbing me with a lead pencil and breaking off our relationship.” “You do like cruel women,” I say. “Then there was Violet, a pixie. I wrote terrible poetry about how I adored her. Unfortunately, she adored duels and would get into trouble so that I would have to fight for her honor. And even more unfortunately, neither my sister nor my father bothered to teach me how to fight for show. I thought of the dead-eyed expression on his face before his bout with the ogre and Tiernan’s angry words. “That resulted in my accidentally killing a person she liked better than me.” “Oh,” I say. “That is three levels of unfortunate.” “Then there was Sibi, who wanted to run away from Court with me, but as soon as we went, hated it and wept until I took her home. And Loana, a mermaid, who found my lack of a tail unbearable but tried to drown me anyway, because she found it equally unbearable that I would ever love another.” The way he tells these stories makes me recall how he’s told me many painful things before. Some people laugh in the face of death. He laughed in the face of despair. “How old were you?” “Fifteen, with the mermaid,” he said. “And nearly three years later, I must surely be wiser.” “Surely,” I say, wondering if he was. Wondering if I wanted him to be.

And there’s no holding back that lava flow. Like Mount Vesuvius, I blow. All the tears I’ve never cried, all the grief I never expressed, all the fury and the sorrow come pouring out until I’m sobbing like a very small girl, wailing while their hands stroke me and pet my head, while arms hold me solid and voices whisper, “Go ahead and cry; we’ve got you.” I’ve been so lonely for such a very long time. We’ve got you.

She's amazing." Galen turns to Dr. Milligan, who's standing beside him and staring at Emma as if she were floating in midair. "Yes, she is," Galen says. Dr. Milligan looks at Galen, a knowing smile plastered on his face. "Looks like she's enchanted more than just the little fish. In fact, looks like you're worse off than any of them, my boy." Galen shrugs. He's got nothing to hide from Dr. Milligan. Dr. Milligan lets out his breath in a whistle. "What does Rayna say?" "She likes her." The good doctor raises a thin gray brow. Galen sighs. "She likes her enough.." "Well, can't ask for more than that, I suppose. Shall we, then?" Galen nods. "Emma. Dr. Milligan is here." Emma turns. And freezes. "You!" she chokes out. "You're Dr. Milligan?" The older man bows his head. "Yes, young lady, I am. You remember me, then." She nods, walking slowly toward them as if she smells a trap. "You tried to give me free season passes. You talked to me at the petting tank." "Yes," he says. "Of course I offered you season passes. How else could I study your fascinating interaction with the specimens?" She crosses her arms. "I didn't know I could talk to fish at the time. How did you?" "At first I didn't," he says, closing the distance between them and gently taking her hand. "But when I saw your eye color, I knew you had to be Syrena. I remembered Galen telling me about that gift, but I never really believed it. Which is silly, I suppose. I mean, if I believe in mermaids-ahem, excuse me Galen, Syrena-then why not a gift like that?" "And what do you think now, Dr. Milligan?" Galen says, a little perturbed at the revelation that his friend thought he lied. Also, "mermaids" was uncalled for.

morning to pour out the sugar and substitute salt, thinking it so hilarious until our father lost his temper and spanked us both. The two of us dancing on the Eden patio in my mother’s cast-off nightgowns. Playing mermaid on the beach or fairies on the bluffs. Later, all three of us moving like a school of fish, Josie and Dylan and me, swimming in the cove or making a bonfire or practicing calligraphy with fountain pens my mother brought back from some trip she took with my father during one of their happy stints, an interest bolstered by Dylan’s passion for all things Chinese. Like so many boys of the era, he’d fallen hard for Kwai Chang Caine in the Kung Fu television series. I adored them both, but my sister was first. Worshipped the very air she breathed. I would have done anything she told me—chased down bandits, built a ladder to the moon. In turn, she brought me sand dollars to examine and Pop-Tarts she stole from the pantry in the house kitchen, and she kept her arms around me all night. It was Dylan who introduced surfing. He taught us when I was seven and Josie nine. It gave us both a sense of power and relief, a way to escape our crumbling family life and explore the sea—and, of course, it was our bond with Dylan himself. Josie. Thinking of her in the times before she turned into the later version of herself, the aloof, promiscuous addict, makes me ache with longing. I miss my sister with every molecule

There is an untapped beauty which lies just below the surface of the face of the ability to strip oneself of all of the veils that one covers himself/herself in before looking into the mirror. I wrote something many years ago, which has to do with the mermaid speaking to the white witch: "I am a mermaid and I know what I am but you are a white witch draped in silver robes"... it was about how people lie to themselves about who they are. They cover themselves in silver linings, in silver veils, in silver robes, while the cauldron they stir comes from hell! This piece that I wrote has since become exceedingly popular and exaggeratedly quoted. But even when we are mermaids, we still need to stop and look into the mirror and remove the silver lining we outline ourselves in, so that we can see who we really are, practice what we really are, thus becoming authentic through-and-through. Because this is the only way that we can reach our full capacities to enliven what we are capable of becoming and being. We often believe that silver linings are what enables us; nevertheless, silver linings often hold us down. Silver is heavy metal. Imagine all you could be, if you could be YOUR ACTUAL SELF. Who are you without your silver paint and paintbrush? It is a very liberating practice, a practice I am most eager to continue cultivating within me. Who are you without all of the adjectives you add to your existence? How do you move? What is that look in your eyes? Does your heartbeat match the pulses of the Sun? You'll never know until you put down your paintbrush.

island—the pirates he’d defeated, before he in turn was defeated by the boy, and those hideous demon she-fish. But it didn’t matter whose camp it was. Anybody—or any thing—who got in their way would be no match for Nerezza’s raiders and their…guest. If the starstuff was on the island, they would have it. Slank tried not to think about what could happen to him if the starstuff wasn’t on the island. It has to be here, he told himself. It has to be. The men were lowering the boats now. Slank eyed the dark water; his face betrayed the apprehension he felt. “What is it?” sneered Nerezza. “Afraid of the fishes, are you?” “I ain’t afraid,” snapped Slank. “But I ain’t eager to meet up with them she-fish again.” He shuddered, remembering when he had last been there, remembering the feel of the mermaids’ teeth sinking into him, recalling his blood clouding the water. Nerezza, who wasn’t sure he believed in these she-fish, coughed out a laugh. It wasn’t natural, coming from him; it sounded a bit painful. He pointed to the darkened companionway. “There’s no fish—no creature alive—can possibly match our dark friend down there,” he said. “Nothing on that island, neither.” Slank looked back to the island. He figured it to be about two miles to the smoke if they went along the shore; far shorter if they cut directly across the island. Slank wanted to take the coast—he didn’t care to be in the jungle at night, not on this island—but Nerezza overruled him. “We’ll set off through the jungle,” Nerezza said. “Not only for the sake of speed, but for the sake of darkness. Our guest don’t want no light whatsoever. We go the darkest way.” “No light? How do we find the way?” “That ain’t up to us,” said Nerezza. “Our guest leads, and we follow. Mark my words, Mister Slank, there’s only one man in

Your quest is powerful. You needn’t apologize for the space it takes.” He

The fog eddied and moved, and between tufts I thought I saw Cinder, sitting with somebody.

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.” I

enough to live in. I’m sure people did, once upon a time.

I needed her. Every girl needs a mother who protects her with a savage fury. Mine didn't even meow in my direction.

. . . And when the big shark came, Millie the Mermaid found her courage and saved the school of fishes.” Ella Rose made a ta-da motion with her hands. “That’s a very good story, darling.” Ella Rose nodded. “Julia’s going to give me a copy of my very own when it gets published. She’s really smart, you know. She writes books. George said she wrote one about you, Daddy. But we can’t read it be—” Aidan didn’t think this would be a good time for his ex to hear about Julia’s sexy books. “Okay, so who wants to grab a bite to eat before I have to leave?” Harper frowned at Aidan and then said to their daughter, “I hope Julia told Derek to apologize to you.” “Yes, she did. And she said that just because someone doesn’t believe what you do doesn’t make you right and them wrong. We have to respect each others differences.” Harper gave Aidan an apologetic, I-guess-I-overreacted look. “I appreciate that Julia doesn’t talk down to you because you’re children. That’s why Mommy told you that Santa isn’t real and neither are the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy. I respect you too much to lie to you, darling. And now, you see, I’m not the only one. Julia doesn’t believe in—” “Oh, yes, she does, Mommy,” Ella Rose said, her eyes shining “Julia believes in Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny, and fairies too. She believes in everything magical, and I do too!” Aidan covered his laugh with a cough. “Don’t you dare. This is your fault for getting involved with a woman who is delusional. Who in their right mind believes in fairytales and—” “It’s okay, Mommy. Julia says not everyone can see the magic.” “All right, Ella Rose, I think I’ve heard just about enough about Julia for—” “She says why be ordinary when you can be extraordinary?” Ella Rose jumped off the bed and did a pirouette. “I’m going to be extraordinary just like Julia when I grow up.

There was a slight degree of humility you had to sacrifice along with the ticket price in order to see something magical. You had to admit that human reason and progress were in some ways lacking. You had to be a food. You believed in what you needed to believe in these places. She needed to believe in the mermaid. Mermaids had no other role than to be themselves. They were not mothers or sisters or daughters.

His shrug is somehow sad, and that ticks another box. No tortured men. They always want saving, and given my childhood filled with broken people, it’s an impulse I have to constantly fight.

Not everything is a disaster waiting to happen, I tell myself. Although, strictly speaking, it is.

I realize I’m freaking out a little over a situation I can’t control. Shocking.

I’d never heard of a feijoa before I arrived in New Zealand. They’re a small green fruit that looks like a cross between an avocado and a lime on the outside, but inside boasts a fragrant yellow flesh with a texture much like a ripe pear’s. The flavor is an acquired taste—sweet and perfumed, a combination of a dozen other things—but to me, they are just simply, sublimely feijoa.

I like cats,” he says quietly.

see

Every girl needs a mother who protects her with a savage fury. Mine didn’t even meow in my direction.