I’ve said it before – I love words. I love how they swirl together into sentences to form beautiful, horrible or sensual images.

I also love my Kindle. I use it almost exclusively, and one of the main reasons is the ability to highlight. When I read an amazing sentence (or two), I highlight them and can refer to them whenever I’d like. By the way, there’s an easier way to access your highlights. Just go to: https://read.amazon.com/kp/notebook.

When I need inspiration, I refer to them. Here are only a few of my stash. Know that there are MANY more. You can probably guess my favorite authors from this as well.

Truth vibrates when it’s drawn across the bow of pain;

“After fifteen years, love isn’t just a feeling,” he says. “It’s a choice.”

He was the kind of dog whose heart was too big for his own body, and so he continuously offered it up to me.

  Jodi Picoult, The Book of Two Ways

“The truth may be better than lies,” Tessie said. “But it doesn’t always set you free.”

Harlan Coben, Missing You

Memories, you see, hurt. The good ones most of all.

Harlan Coben, Tell No One

“It’s the cruelest thing in the world. Death is better. When you’re dead, the pain stops. But hope keeps raising you way up high, only to drop you to the hard ground. Hope cradles your heart in its hand and then it crushes it with a fist. Over and over. It never stops. That’s what hope does.”

  Harlan Coben, Six Years

She nodded, but there was no agreement in it.

But time does heal. Not like we think it does, not like we would—from the front—but more from the back or side or someplace we can’t see it coming. It bubbles up beneath and rises all around. All of a sudden I dried my eyes long enough to look up, look beyond myself, and discovered my pain had become the sinew that held me together.

  Charles Martin, Where the River Ends

His father was self-made, but his mother was constructed by others, and such edifices are notoriously fragile.

  Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace

Making do with other people’s scraps was the story of my childhood.

A Place of Wonder, Barbara O’Neal

Another part of getting older: you forgot what you wanted to remember, and remembered what you wanted to forget. He could be the old wag that said that. He should get a pillow stitched with it.

Broken taillight glass shone on the pavement like drops of blood.

  Stephen King, Sleeping Beauties

The stars are so thick I can’t tell where some start and others end, as if a barrel of glowing salt just exploded in the heavens.

Maybe laughter after someone dies is the way we tell ourselves that they are still alive in some way. Or that we are.

Mitch Ablom, The Stranger in the Lifeboat

My hair is brown, but not a brown that would inspire a name like chestnut or milk chocolate. It’s more the color of a brown couch cushion that’s sat too long beside a sunny window and faded to something you could only describe as drab.

Clouds darken and bulge, while the merry-go-round turns on its own, only the wind riding it.

He begins to push with lumbering steps. If only he knew how to cry. If only I knew how to hold him.

Still, some must hope. Others must rage and strike out. You can’t tell someone how to mourn. You can’t tell someone how to die.

Susan Henderson, The Flicker of Old Dreams

And last and least, a couple of my favorites that I’ve written:

The grief counselor told the group to be grateful for what they had left. After lots of considering, Charla Rae decided she was grateful for the bull semen.

         The Sweet Spot

‘Pain is universal. Suffering is optional.’

 The Road to Me

How odd life was. She’d tried to save her sister, and failed. She tried to save a bunch of cowboys, and succeeded.

Maybe it was time for her to save herself.

Days Made of Glass

 

So how about you? Do you collect great lines? What are your favorites?