Mary E. Pearson Quotes

I thought grandmothers had to like you. It’s a law or something.

You've always been two people. The Jenna who wants to please and the Jenna who secretly resents in. They won't break, you know. Your parents never thought you were perfect. You did.

But I am more than a name. More than they tell me

One small changed family doesn't calculate into a world that has been spinning for a billion years. But one small change makes the world spin differently in a billion ways for one family.

There are many words and definitions I have never lost. But some I am only just beginning to truly understand.

Awareness There is a dark place. A place where I have no eyes, no mouth. No words. I can't cry out because I have no breath. The silence is so deep I want to die. But I can't. The darkness and silence go on forever. It is not a dream. I don't dream.

My memory is coming back. It is curious how it comes. Each day, a rush of pieces, loosely connected, unimportant bits, snake through me. They click, click, click into my brain, like links being snapped together. And then they are done. A small chain of memories that fill in one tiny part of my life. They come out of nowhere, and most are not important.

Multiple closets for different needs. Overkill.

Father says it will come in time. “Time heals,” he says. I don’t tell him that I don’t know what time is.

Percentages! Those are for economists, polls, and politicians. Percentages can't define your identity.

The information. Every bit that of information that was ever in your brain. But the information is not the mind Jenna. That we've never accomplished before. What we've done with you is groundbreaking. We cracked the code. The mind is an energy that the brain produces. Think of a glass ball twirling on your fingertip. If it falls, it shatters into a million pieces. All the parts of a ball are still there, but it will never twirl with that force on your fingertip again. The brain is the same way.

Are the details of our lives who we are, or is it owning those details that makes the difference?

When is a cell finally too small to hold our essence?

Where we are going, I don't know. It doesn't seem to be the place that is important but the steps in between.

Tell me who I am. (29)

When you are perfect, is there anywhere else to go?

Which weakness shall I tell her? “I walk funny,” I say, and she’s satisfied with that. (inside joke)

Chance. It weaves through our lives like a golden thread, sometimes knotting, tangling, and breaking along the way. Loose threads are left hanging, but the in and out, the back and forth continues, the weaving goes on. It doesn't stop.

I still cry on waking. I'm not sure why. I feel nothing. Nothing I can name, anyway. It's like breathing - something that happens over which I have no control. (6)

Maybe there was no one way to define it. Maybe there were as many shades of love as the blues of the sky.

I don't want five hundred billion neural chips. I want guts.

Words have longer lives than people.

My timing is off. But I had to get it out. Some things you have to tell, no matter how stupid they may sound. Some things you can't save for later. There might not be a later.

I suppose you're right about some perspectives. Just a few weeks ago, I thought you were a dickhead.

Observing and understanding are two different things.

Sometimes there's not a better way. Sometimes there's only the hard way.

... Change doesn't happen overnight-it's molded by people who don't give up

It's other people who make us wise, and I haven't known nearly enough.

Do certain events in our lives leave a permanent mark, freezing a piece of us in time, and that becomes a touchstone that we measure the rest of our lives against?

It can take years to mold a dream. It takes only a fraction of a second for it to be shattered.

There is something about her eyes. Eyes don't breathe. I know that much. But hers look breathless.

I just think perfection and lasting through the ages is for Greek statues, not us mere humans.

When your life has had few events to occupy it, it's amazing how a simple encounter can seem like an entire three-act play.

It's the unknown that I fear, the bites of memories that still have no connections.

I used to be someone.

But remember, child, we may all have our own story and destiny, and sometimes our seemingly bad fortune, but we're all part of a greater story too. One that transcends the soil, the wind, time even our own tears. Greater stories will have their way.

People will notice the beauty of what they usually ignore ~

How can you be sure?" "I'm a doctor, Jenna. And a scientist." "Does that make you an authority on everything? What about a soul, Father? When you were so busy implanting all your neural chips, did you think about that? Did you snip my soul from my old body, too? Where did you put it? Show me! Where? Where in all this groundbreaking technology did you insert my soul?

The world before us is a postcard, and I imagine the story we are writing on it.

Things I can feel. Hard. Soft. Rough. Smooth. But the inside kind of feel, it is all the same, like foggy mush. Is that the part of me that is still asleep? (9)

it is amazin, she thinks, how simple appearances can be created - a rush, a smile, a new coat of paint, a slow, calm voice, a hug, a new dress - a resolve to keep out questions and cling to secrets

He believes me. But that is nothing new. He always did because I was a rule follower. I played by the rules he understood. But there are new rules now, ones he doesn't know yet. He'll learn. Just as I'm learning.

Pieces. A bit for someone here. A bit there. And sometimes they don't add up to anything whole. But you are so busy dancing. Delivering. You don't have time to notice. Or are afraid to notice. And then one day you have to look. And it's true. All of your pieces fill up other people's holes. But they don't fill your own.

A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten . . .

Some things aren't meant to be known. Only believed.

...and time becomes a forgotten detail.

I think that maybe forgiveness is like change - it comes in small steps. (256)

Picture yourself five years from now. Where do you want to be? Remember that. Every day. That's how you'll get there.