125 Quotes by Charles Martin

My life had been characterized by emptiness the size of the Sahara but there, in that moment, in the back of that truck in the armpit of Nicaragua, I wondered – for the first time – if there wasn’t a river flowing down deep inside me. If so, the water that would cleanse me was not water from my head – where I’d learned to rationalize my indifference. But water from my heart.

More than that, I liked being known, and for the first time in my life, I was known by another. I’m not saying I liked what she knew about me, not proud of the bits and pieces, but somehow she was standing inside my skin and yet I didn’t experience shame at her reflection.

It’s amazing what we value when we’re at our lowest.

I had to let her go. She’s not coming back. The distance is too great. The mountain between us is the one mountain I cannot climb.

Sometimes I think that hell is two places: it’s a place you end up, but it’s also a place that you live before you get there. I don’t know if the devil’s got horns and a spear for a tail, but I don’t think that’s the point. The point is that hell is separate from love. If Lucifer knows anything, he knows that. And ever since Emma left, I’d known the same thing. It’s a lonely, desolate place.

I’m not leaving something for you. I’m leaving something in you.

I sat in that room and realized that you can cut off a finger, cut off a hand, even cut off a leg, but if you take a woman’s breast, you are cutting more than just a body part.

Child, you listen to me, and you look me straight in the eyes when I’m talking to you. I may be just old hired help, and a country woman to boot, but I’m a human. And you know what? God thought of me. He actually took the time to dream me up. I may not be much to look at, but what you see first started in the mind of God, so don’t stand there and ignore me like I don’t exist. You remember that.” Miss.

If the worst is a possibility, then you keep it on the table. Don’t hide from it. Don’t run. It can happen. And if and when it does, you need to have thought about it ahead of time. That way you’re not crushed when your worst thought becomes your reality.