12 Quotes by Sarah Penner

Intermingled in the mess was another, subtler secret ... we were happy, yet unfulfilled. It was possible, I understood now, to be both at the same time.

My mother had held tight to this principle, instilling in me from an early age the importance of providing a safe haven - a place of healing - females.

First, there was trust. Then, there was betrayal. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot be betrayed by someone you do not trust ... what you have learned is the same heart-wrenching journey of every woman to whom I have sold a poison. And it is, indeed, the same path for me.

... not everything in my life was how I imagined it would be, and that I hadn't lived up to my own potential. And worst of all, I'd been too scared to even try.

Healing by way of vengeance ... no such thing existed; it never had. Hurting others had only injured me further.

As a student, I'd been fascinated by the lives of ordinary people, those whose names weren't acknowledged and recorded in textbooks. And now, I'd stumbled on the mystery of one of those nameless, forgotten people - and a woman, no less.

Why do we go to such lengths to protect the fragile minds of children? We only robbed them of the truth--and the chance to grow numb to it before it arrived with a hard knock on the door.

If felt as though the universe, in her strange and nonsensical way, meant to reach out to me, to remind me of the enthusiasm I once had for the trifling bits of bygone eras, if only I could look beneath the dirt that had accumulated over time.

I now stood at a crossroads, and I didn't dare look back at the road behind me—the road littered with monotony, complacency and other people's expectations.