I just don't know where home is. There's this promise of happiness out there. I know it. I even feel it sometimes. But it's like chasing the moon - just when I think I have it, it disappears into the horizon. I grieve and try to move on, but then the damn thing comes back the next night, giving me hope of catching it all over again.

Sarah Addison Allen

Categorized in : Moving Home Moon

Happiness is a risk. If you’re not a little scared, then you’re not doing it right.

Sarah Addison Allen

risk littles happiness

Books can be possessive, can't they? You're walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what's inside will change your life, but sometimes you don't even have to read it. Sometimes it's a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven't even had their spines cracked. 'Why do you buy books you don't even read?' our daughter asks us. That's like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course.

Sarah Addison Allen

cat daughter book

Every life needs a little space. It leaves room for good things to enter it.

Sarah Addison Allen

space littles needs

Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You aren't always shown the path in life you're supposed to take. But if there was one thing she'd learned in the past few weeks, it was that sometimes, when you're really lucky, you meet someone with a map.

Sarah Addison Allen

fate past promise

You can't change where you come from, but you can change where you go from here. Just like a book. If you don't like the ending, you make up a new one.

Sarah Addison Allen

cant-change where-you-come book

I needed to stop being what everyone thought I was.

Sarah Addison Allen

freedom needed

Don't let anyone see your vulnerable spots. Once they knew how to hurt you, they would do it again and again.

Sarah Addison Allen

spots vulnerable hurt

We're connected, as women. It's like a spiderweb. If one part of that web vibrates, if there's trouble, we all know it, but most of the time we're just too scared, or selfish, or insecure to help. But if we don't help each other, who will?

Sarah Addison Allen

insecure women selfish

She never thought she was good at making friends. But maybe she was just trying to be friends with the wrong people.

Sarah Addison Allen

making-friends trying people

I think Heaven will be like a first kiss.

Sarah Addison Allen

kissing heaven thinking

How we see the world changes all the time. It all depends on our mood.

Sarah Addison Allen

depends mood world

After you finish a book, the story still goes on in your mind. You can never change the beginning. But you can always change the end.

Sarah Addison Allen

stories mind book

Coffee, she'd discovered, was tied to all sorts of memories, different for each person. Sunday mornings, friendly get-togethers, a favorite grandfather long since gone, the AA meeting that saved their life. Coffee meant something to people. Most found their lives were miserable without it. Coffee was a lot like love that way. And because Rachel believed in love, she believed in coffee, too.

Sarah Addison Allen

coffee morning memories

Right now everyone is drinking bad wine made of sour grapes and hysteria. Let them drink it, and let them regret it in the morning.

Sarah Addison Allen

regret drinking morning

Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people's legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.

Sarah Addison Allen

cat inspirational fall

The next morning dawned bright and sweet, like ribbon candy.

Sarah Addison Allen

good-morning good-day sweet

When you're happy for yourself, it fills you. When you're happy for someone else, it pours over.

Sarah Addison Allen

happiness

But one thing she [Rachel] did believe in was love. She believed that you could smell it, that you could taste it, that it could change the entire course of your life.

Sarah Addison Allen

smell taste believe

But relying on one person for your every need is so dangerous. One set of hands isn't enough to keep you from falling.

Sarah Addison Allen

hands fall needs

When you're a teenager, your friends are your life. When you grow up, friendships seem to get pushed further and further back, until it seems like a luxury, a frivolity, like a bubble bath.

Sarah Addison Allen

luxury teenager growing-up