Quotes by Susan Wiggs

She knew with painful certainty that the opposite of love was not hate, but indifference.

Insults sting but a little when they stem from a mans ignorance.

Her name was a silent song on his lips. Her love was like a circle in the water, radiating ever outward, inevitably encompassing even the remotest of hearts.

It isn’t fair, but maybe that’s the whole point. Fairness has no part in real life, and she took that lesson away from the Hotel Angeline with her.

Youre never alone when youre reading a book.

Fear and love were sometimes the same thing both necessary unavoidable. Now she understood that it was okay to bleed if you know how to heal.

She loved old things. The brown-brick place was a survivor of the 1907 earthquake and fire, and proudly bore a plaque from the historical society. The building had a haunted history- it was the site of a crime of passion- but Tess didnt mind. Shed never been superstitious.The apartment was filled with items shed collected through the years, simply because she liked them or was intrigued by them. There was a balance between heirloom and kitsch. The common thread seemed to be that each object had a story, like a pottery jug with a bas-relief love story told in pictures, in which shed found a note reading, Long may we run. -Gilbert. Or the antique clock on the living room wall, each of its carved figures modeled after one of the clockmakers twelve children. She favored the unusual, so long as it appeared to have been treasured by someone, once upon a time. Her mail spilled from an antique box containing a pigeon-racing counter with a brass plate engraved from a father to a son. She hung her huge handbag on a wrought iron finial from a town library that had burned and been rebuilt in a matter of weeks by an entire community.Other peoples treasures captivated her. They always had, steeped in hidden history, bearing the nicks and gouges and fingerprints of previous owners. Shed probably developed the affinity from spending so much of her childhood in her grandmothers antique shop.

What a joy life is when you have made a close working partnership with Nature, helping her to produce for the benefit of mankind new forms, colors, and perfumes in flowers which were never known before; fruits in form, size, and flavor never before seen on this globe. -Luther Burbank.

There can be no fooling ourselves into thinking this is something other than what it is—the willful ejection of Molly from our nest. It’s too late for second thoughts, anyway. She has to be moved into her dorm in time for freshman orientation. It’s been marked on the kitchen calendar for weeks—the expiration date on her childhood.

You have seven writers in your basement?”Donald nods, signing, “They like it here. There’s a poet, a couple of novelists, an opera librettist, an essay writer . . . . They don’t usually make much trouble.

Even the most egregious captive state, bound and gagged on her damp bunk, felt eerily familiar to her. With nothing to do but lie there and think of things, she reflected that captivity took many different forms. A woman under the domination of her father or husband was as much a prisoner as a hostage on a boat. She had merely traded one form of servitude for another.

If Im all alone, then the standard for sanity is up to me entirely.

Lately, shed been waking up early every day, too excited to sleep. She was working on the biggest project shed ever dared to undertake- transforming her family home into a destination cooking school. The work was nearing completion, and if everything went according to schedule, she would welcome the first guests of the Bella Vista Cooking School at harvest time.The big rambling mission-style hacienda, with its working apple orchard and kitchen gardens, was the perfect venue for the project. The place had long been just too much for just her and her grandfather, and Isabels dreams had always been too big for her budget. She was passionate about cooking and in love with the idea of creating a place for other dreamers to come and learn the culinary arts.

Life could be very distracting, thought Isabel. And that was a good thing. It kept her from focusing on things that couldnt be changed, such as the fact that shed never finished culinary school, or that shed allowed one failed relationship to keep her closed up tight inside a hard, protective shell. Now she had a new project that consumed her every waking moment- the cooking school. It was true that she didnt have the official certification from a prestigious institute, but she had something that couldnt be taught- a God-given talent in the kitchen.She clung to that gift, grateful to let the passion consume her and fill her days with a joyous pursuit. She believed living and feeling well came from eating well, appreciating the simple things in life and spending time in the company of family and friends, and that was the mission of the Bella Vista Cooking School.

This time of year, the purple blooms were busy with life- not just the bees, but butterflies and ladybugs, skippers and emerald-toned beetles, flitting hummingbirds and sapphire dragonflies. The sun-warmed sweet haze of the blossoms filled the air.When I was a kid, said Isabel, I used to capture butterflies, but I was afraid of the bees. Im getting over that, though. The bees softly rose and hovered over the flowers, their steady hum oddly soothing. The quiet buzzing was the soundtrack of her girlhood summers. Even now, she could close her eyes and remember her walks with Bubbie, and how they would net a monarch or swallowtail butterfly, studying the creature in a big clear jar before setting it free again. They always set them free.As she watched the activity in the hedge, a memory floated up from the past- Bubbie, gently explaining to Isabel why they needed to open the jar. No creature should ever be trapped against its will, she used to say. It will ruin itself, just trying to escape. As a survivor of a concentration camp, Bubbie only ever spoke of the experience in the most oblique of terms.

She knew the soothing power of a human touch on aching flesh. Knew the strange bond that formed when two creatures united in mutual need, one hurting, the other healing.

She watched the gap between ship and shore grow to a huge gulf. Perhaps this was a little like dying, the departed no longer visible to the others, yet both still existed, only in different worlds.

Already, Seattle is taking hold of her. She still holds Sedona in the dry tan of her skin and in her hair, but the fine mist of the Northwest is making its way to places she didn’t know were parched.

He could not name precisely the special quality she possessed. A glow. An exuberance. An aggressive and determined joy that gave her the courage to push past his defenses, to confront him with unflinching courage, to look into his heart and to see something there worth fighting for.

You always look on the dark side of life. I believe in capturing the moment...Joy is so fleeting. You never know when it might be snatched away.