203 Quotes by Lisa Wingate

Well, that's one of the paradoxes of life. You can't have it all. You can have some of this or some of that or all of this and none of that. We make trade-offs we think are best at the time.

What does a lighthouse do? I ask myself. It never moves. It cannot hike up its rocky skirt and dash into the ocean to rescue the foundering ship. It cannot calm the waters or clear the shoals. It can only cast light into the darkness. It can only point the way. Yet, through one lighthouse, you guide many ships. Show this old lighthouse the way.

Who are you, really? The question penetrated, echoed, demanded an answer. It nipped at me in ways I wasn't prepared for, pinched in places I didn't like. Was I really so entrenched in the world I'd been raised in, so set in my ways that I couldn't look beyond the surface of another person and see a human being? Was I that shallow?

Fear builds walls instead of bridges. I want a life of bridges, not walls.

A person must have principles, Epiphany. That's the one thing no one can take from you. The only way you can lose your principles is to give them up. Remember that.

Sleep finally comes like a summer dry river, a trickle that's shallow and splits around rocks and downed branches and tree roots, dividing and dividing, till by morning it's the thin bead of gathered morning dew, dripping lazy off the army tent overhead.

The upscale neighborhoods in Blue Sky Hill weren't all lily white anymore, but you could be sure their kids didn't wear our kind of clothes, or get free lunches at the Summer Kitchen, or pick up used books and magazines down at the Book Basket store, or go to the public school. These days it wasn't about what color you were, but how much money you had. The same, only different. It was still people not wanting to be with people who weren't their kind.

My mama used to say the blues is an ailment that don't like no sunshine in the room.

I’ve finally come to fully understand that you can’t fix another person. You can’t fix the past. You can only change your way of reacting to it.