“What if even then, God had plans for a second garden? Another tree, and another chance to reach out and accept the abundance of life? What if in Eden, God was planning Gethsemane?"The question echoed through Lucy, growing in power with each reverberation within her soul.She held a flower in her hands. The sweet, exotic perfume floated deep into Lucy's heart---carrying Ms. Beth's words right along beside it. Lucy hesitated, allowing the words to take effect. "Are you circling a closed Eden, or have you chosen to step into Gethsemane, through the open gate?"Lucy blinked. She had never thought of it like that."Maybe what you thought was a closed gate meant to punish you is actually God's way of protecting you from remaining in a place where you won't and can't receive His life."The truth washed Lucy's heart with color. As it brushed over the harsh edges with water, watercolor blooms began to blend one into the other, filling her with understanding.Lucy's heart swelled as the long-dry soil soaked up this water."Where you're preoccupied with your failures and your fears and the desire to preserve all you might lose, God has a plan to preserve something else. To root you in a place where life can grow within you once more, freely and abundantly. A garden of death for a garden of life, where through His own resurrection Jesus returns all that was stolen.”
―
Ashley Clark,
Paint and Nectar
“Life shouldn’t be reduced to filtered images and captions, should it? It’s about birth and death and that beautiful, brutal stretch of time between.” ― Lucy Clarke, You Let Me In
“You know that feeling when you read a good book, and you’re totally transported to the world within those pages? Your imagination has travelled there – and yet your body is not fooled: it knows you haven’t left the sofa.” ― Lucy Clarke, The Castaways
“The problem with night was that all the things you avoided thinking about during the day gave you a knowing wink – See you tonight, then! – and there they were, as soon as you closed your eyes. Except at night it was even worse, because by then you were too tired to think rationally and everything became magnified, distorted.” ― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls
“Loneliness wasn’t the absence of people, she realized. It was the absence of people who understood you.” ― Lucy Clarke, The Hike
“Two hours later, Revere trotted into Lexington, his mount thoroughly lathered after outgalloping a pair of Gage’s equestrian sentinels near Charlestown. Veering north toward the Mystic River to avoid further trouble, Revere had alerted almost every farmstead and minute captain within shouting distance. Popular lore later credited him with a stirring battle cry—“The British are coming!”—but a witness quoted him as warning, more prosaically, “The regulars are coming out.” Now he carried the alarm to the Reverend Jonas Clarke’s parsonage, just up the road from Lexington Common. Here Clarke had written three thousand sermons in twenty years; here he called up the stairs each morning to rouse his ten children—“Polly, Betsey, Lucy, Liddy, Patty, Sally, Thomas, Jonas, William, Peter, get up!” And here he had given sanctuary, in a bedroom to the left of the front door, to the renegades Hancock and Samuel Adams. A squad of militiamen stood guard at the house as Revere dismounted, spurs clanking. Two warnings had already come from the east: as many as nine mounted British officers had been seen patrolling the Middlesex roads, perhaps “upon some evil design.” At the door, a suspicious orderly sergeant challenged Revere, and Clarke blocked his path until Hancock reportedly called out, “Come in, Revere, we’re not afraid of you.” The herald delivered his message: British regulars by the hundreds were coming out, first by boat, then on foot. There was not a moment to lose.” ― Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777
“He arrives carrying a forest, and you said he walks his cat on a leash, and he's the one assessing other people's mental health?” ― Margo Rabb, Lucy Clark Will Not Apologize
“Hope is all that remains when concrete, tangible facts have scattered.” ― Lucy Clarke, The Castaways
“They didn't believe me," I told Jack. "What kind of evidence do you and the police need? The killer to stick a knife in someone's neck in front of you and say, I'm committing murder right now-please video record this so there's evidence, and make sure to focus the camera on my face!” ― Margo Rabb, Lucy Clark Will Not Apologize
“You don't know how much you love someone until you realise you're never going to see them again. That you must live in a world where they no longer are.” ― Lucy Clarke, The Hike
“That's what life gets reduced to in those final moments - the person you choose to hold hands with.” ― Lucy Clarke, The Hike
“A trellis filled with roses arched above the patio, leading to a winding garden path made out of stones that Lucy wanted to skip along. Flowers in reds and pinks and whites and purples bloomed from the curved edges of the yard, so beautiful they reminded Lucy of something out of Eliza's paintings.” ― Ashley Clark, Paint and Nectar
“beautiful cocktail of our happy hormones – oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin – elevates our mood. Studies” ― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls
“For so long I believed that I should only feel pleasure when I no longer feel all the other things: the sadness, the loss, the fear. But emotions don't come parcelled neatly. They're shaken together and messy. Happiness laced with sadness. Hope tangled with fear. Love shadowed by loss. It isn't about waiting until I'm in a better place. Striving for a happy life. It's about feeling life.” ― Lucy Clarke, The Castaways
“If the others wanted to sip one glass of wine and call it a night by ten o’clock, then they should go join a book club.” ― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls
“Mimsy stood up and hugged her. "I thought we needed a Sea Change Day."Edith squeezed Mimsy's hand and exhaled. "We do.""A what?" I asked."It's a thing since we were teenagers," Mimsy said. "It's from one of Edith's favorite authors, M. F. K. Fisher. She started publishing books in the 1930s, and she wrote about ocean crossings to Europe-sea changes-and how your soul changes when you cross the sea. And she wrote about food and love."If Edith and Mimsy wrote their own self-help book, it would be called: How to Stay Sane and Happy in a Dark, Dark World.Our tea arrived, and Edith sipped hers slowly. "A Sea Change Day is when you say 'screw it' to everything that's expected of you, everything you're supposed to do. It's a way to turn around a ble day. A low day. To take a break and explore. Have dessert for lunch. Eat something beautiful.” ― Margo Rabb, Lucy Clark Will Not Apologize
“I thought back to when I'd first stepped in Mimsy's garden and time has stopped, and I felt that strange joy. A crack in the universe. A shift in reality. I felt that now, too, like someone had performed surgery on my soul and tucked this strange new thing deep inside me: this knowledge of the world and what mattered in it. How there were places where you could go to escape the dark, terrifying world, at least for a little while. How beautiful things-small beautiful things-food and plants and flowers-how they could change you. That food wasn't about numbers and calories and nutrition, but beauty. That these beautiful things could be a key to unlocking a world inside you, a place that you couldn't before reach. It could be protection, an armor, a way to survive the darkness. A way to walk through the world when you wanted to hide in bed all day and night.” ― Margo Rabb, Lucy Clark Will Not Apologize
“We journeyed from different corners of the country to be there. We came together for her. Because we loved her. In a hundred different ways we adored her. We wanted her light to shine on us. We wanted to make it special for her, so she’d see how much we loved her. At a hen party, the bride-to-be takes on an almost celestial, golden status. That weekend, she was the celebrity, and we were her fans and paparazzi.” ― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls
“moment” ― Lucy Clarke, A Single Breath
“Life shouldn’t be reduced to filtered images and captions, should it? It’s about birth and death and that beautiful, brutal stretch of time between.” ― Lucy Clarke, You Let Me In
“You know that feeling when you read a good book, and you’re totally transported to the world within those pages? Your imagination has travelled there – and yet your body is not fooled: it knows you haven’t left the sofa.” ― Lucy Clarke, The Castaways
“The problem with night was that all the things you avoided thinking about during the day gave you a knowing wink – See you tonight, then! – and there they were, as soon as you closed your eyes. Except at night it was even worse, because by then you were too tired to think rationally and everything became magnified, distorted.” ― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls
“Loneliness wasn’t the absence of people, she realized. It was the absence of people who understood you.” ― Lucy Clarke, The Hike
“Two hours later, Revere trotted into Lexington, his mount thoroughly lathered after outgalloping a pair of Gage’s equestrian sentinels near Charlestown. Veering north toward the Mystic River to avoid further trouble, Revere had alerted almost every farmstead and minute captain within shouting distance. Popular lore later credited him with a stirring battle cry—“The British are coming!”—but a witness quoted him as warning, more prosaically, “The regulars are coming out.” Now he carried the alarm to the Reverend Jonas Clarke’s parsonage, just up the road from Lexington Common. Here Clarke had written three thousand sermons in twenty years; here he called up the stairs each morning to rouse his ten children—“Polly, Betsey, Lucy, Liddy, Patty, Sally, Thomas, Jonas, William, Peter, get up!” And here he had given sanctuary, in a bedroom to the left of the front door, to the renegades Hancock and Samuel Adams. A squad of militiamen stood guard at the house as Revere dismounted, spurs clanking. Two warnings had already come from the east: as many as nine mounted British officers had been seen patrolling the Middlesex roads, perhaps “upon some evil design.” At the door, a suspicious orderly sergeant challenged Revere, and Clarke blocked his path until Hancock reportedly called out, “Come in, Revere, we’re not afraid of you.” The herald delivered his message: British regulars by the hundreds were coming out, first by boat, then on foot. There was not a moment to lose.” ― Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777
“He arrives carrying a forest, and you said he walks his cat on a leash, and he's the one assessing other people's mental health?” ― Margo Rabb, Lucy Clark Will Not Apologize
“Hope is all that remains when concrete, tangible facts have scattered.” ― Lucy Clarke, The Castaways
“They didn't believe me," I told Jack. "What kind of evidence do you and the police need? The killer to stick a knife in someone's neck in front of you and say, I'm committing murder right now-please video record this so there's evidence, and make sure to focus the camera on my face!” ― Margo Rabb, Lucy Clark Will Not Apologize
“You don't know how much you love someone until you realise you're never going to see them again. That you must live in a world where they no longer are.” ― Lucy Clarke, The Hike
“That's what life gets reduced to in those final moments - the person you choose to hold hands with.” ― Lucy Clarke, The Hike
“A trellis filled with roses arched above the patio, leading to a winding garden path made out of stones that Lucy wanted to skip along. Flowers in reds and pinks and whites and purples bloomed from the curved edges of the yard, so beautiful they reminded Lucy of something out of Eliza's paintings.” ― Ashley Clark, Paint and Nectar
“beautiful cocktail of our happy hormones – oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin – elevates our mood. Studies” ― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls
“For so long I believed that I should only feel pleasure when I no longer feel all the other things: the sadness, the loss, the fear. But emotions don't come parcelled neatly. They're shaken together and messy. Happiness laced with sadness. Hope tangled with fear. Love shadowed by loss. It isn't about waiting until I'm in a better place. Striving for a happy life. It's about feeling life.” ― Lucy Clarke, The Castaways
“If the others wanted to sip one glass of wine and call it a night by ten o’clock, then they should go join a book club.” ― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls
“Mimsy stood up and hugged her. "I thought we needed a Sea Change Day."Edith squeezed Mimsy's hand and exhaled. "We do.""A what?" I asked."It's a thing since we were teenagers," Mimsy said. "It's from one of Edith's favorite authors, M. F. K. Fisher. She started publishing books in the 1930s, and she wrote about ocean crossings to Europe-sea changes-and how your soul changes when you cross the sea. And she wrote about food and love."If Edith and Mimsy wrote their own self-help book, it would be called: How to Stay Sane and Happy in a Dark, Dark World.Our tea arrived, and Edith sipped hers slowly. "A Sea Change Day is when you say 'screw it' to everything that's expected of you, everything you're supposed to do. It's a way to turn around a ble day. A low day. To take a break and explore. Have dessert for lunch. Eat something beautiful.” ― Margo Rabb, Lucy Clark Will Not Apologize
“I thought back to when I'd first stepped in Mimsy's garden and time has stopped, and I felt that strange joy. A crack in the universe. A shift in reality. I felt that now, too, like someone had performed surgery on my soul and tucked this strange new thing deep inside me: this knowledge of the world and what mattered in it. How there were places where you could go to escape the dark, terrifying world, at least for a little while. How beautiful things-small beautiful things-food and plants and flowers-how they could change you. That food wasn't about numbers and calories and nutrition, but beauty. That these beautiful things could be a key to unlocking a world inside you, a place that you couldn't before reach. It could be protection, an armor, a way to survive the darkness. A way to walk through the world when you wanted to hide in bed all day and night.” ― Margo Rabb, Lucy Clark Will Not Apologize
“We journeyed from different corners of the country to be there. We came together for her. Because we loved her. In a hundred different ways we adored her. We wanted her light to shine on us. We wanted to make it special for her, so she’d see how much we loved her. At a hen party, the bride-to-be takes on an almost celestial, golden status. That weekend, she was the celebrity, and we were her fans and paparazzi.” ― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls
“moment” ― Lucy Clarke, A Single Breath
