Quotes by Richard Paul Evans

I dont get that, I mean, whats power? Lets say he suddenly becomes king of the world. What is he going to do with it that he cant do now? Is his food going to taste better? Is the weather going to be nicer? Will love feel better? I just dont understand that mentality.

Dance. Dance for the joy and breath of childhood. Dance for all children, including that child who is still somewhere entombed beneath the responsibility and skepticism of adulthood. Embrace the moment before it escapes from our grasp. For the only promise of childhood, of any childhood, is that it will someday end. And in the end, we must ask ourselves what we have given our children to take its place. And is it enough?

Its been said that parents should give their children roots and wings. That was a perfect description of my parents. Even in a wheelchair, my father was a dreamer with his head in the clouds and my mother was the roots with both feet planted firmly on terra quaking firma.

I am lonely, I am lonely, I am lonely, I am lonely, I am lonely. How appropriate that I write this to myself.

My mom used to say that faith and fear cant exist simultaneously in the mind any more than light and dark can exist simultaneously in the same room.

As one who would rather light a candle than curse the darkness.

The truest grace is not to forgive, but to have never found fault.

I hope you can someday forgive me.I forgive you now.

Forgiveness is the key to the hearts shackles.

To forgive is to unlock the cage of anothers folly to set ourselves free.

I dont think it is as much a human foible as it is a human curse that we cannot understand the beauty of a thing until it is gone.

We can only lose what we have first claimed.

I think the secret to a hoppy life is a selective memory. Remember what you are most grateful for and quickly forget what your not.

The human life cycle no less than evolves around the box; from the open-topped box called a bassinet, to the pine box we call a coffin, the box is our past and, just as assuredly, our future. It should not surprise us then that the lowly box plays such a significant role in the first Christmas story. For Christmas began in a humble, hay-filled box of splintered wood. The Magi, wise men who had traveled far to see the infant king, laid treasure-filled boxes at the feet of that holy child. And in the end, when He had ransomed our sins with His blood, the Lord of Christmas was laid down in a box of stone. How fitting that each Christmas season brightly wrapped boxes skirt the pine boughs of Christmas trees around the world.

So Ive been thinking. Do you believe theres a hell?Sure. Doesnt everybody?Well, what if this is hell, but we just dont know it?Thats crazy. Hell is like lakes of fire, and there are devils with horns and pitchforks. heres none of those around here.But what if hells not really like that? Grace asked. Everyone says its that way, I said. I dont think Jesus every talked about fire and brimstone.Then why do they teach us that at church?To scare us.Why would they want to scare us?I dont know. I just dont think God wants us to do good things because were scared. I think he wants us to do good things because were good.

I dont want to go to Peru.How do you know? Youve never been there.Ive never been to hell either and Im pretty sure I dont want to go there.

The study showed that chronic loneliness impacts out bodies as negatively as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. Not the same way, of course, just the life risk part. And theres more bad news. The article went on to say that lonely people had worse reactions to flu shots that non-lonelies (I think I just made up that word; my computer put a red squiggly line under it) and that loneliness depresses the immune system. On other words, if youre lonely, not even your body wants to be around you, so it tries to off itself.

What a difference having a friend makes.

The thing is, the only real sign of life is growth. And growth requires pain. So to choose life is to accept pain. Some people go to such lengths to avoid pain that they give up on life. They bury their hearts, or they drug or drink themselves numb until they don’t’ feel anything anymore. The irony is, in the end their escape becomes more painful than what they’re avoiding.

Suffering ceases to be suffering when we form a clear picture of it.