Karen White quotes:

The highway of life was littered with the roadkill of those who didn't know when to change lanes.

Strong winds buffet the sea oats and tall dune grasses, tossing sand and seabirds where it will, winding my sister's golden hair into sunlit spirals of silk until it becomes the only good memory I have of her -- the only memory I allowed myself to keep.

There are no completely good or bad people. Everybody makes mistakes, or bad choices. It's how we live with them that make us the people we are.

A secret society exists, and is living among all of us. They are neither people nor animals, but something in-between.

Adversity in life does not rob your heart of beauty. It simply teaches it a new song to sing.

Death and loss, they plague you. So do memories. Like the Mississippi's incessant slap against the levees, they creep up with deceptive sweetness before grabbing your heart and pulling it under.

I know what it is to hope and pray so hard that you're sure God will answer your prayer just so you'll stop asking.

Life isn't perfect. It's not supposed to be. We all make mistakes. You bash your head against the wall and you get hurt, but you walk away and make the best of it. And that's what makes it life, Brenna, not perfection. You'll never find happiness if you only expect to find a perfect life. Happiness is something we reach for while we try to learn from our disappointments.

Surrounding yourself with a lot of desert is a bit like sitting in quicksand: Sooner or later the water will find you and suck you under."

The answers we seek aren't always the answers we want, are they? But knowing the truth is what helps us sleep at night.

Miles and years become suddenly invisible when you find yourself back where you started from, as if you've learned nothing and you are once again the person you once were.

But I think sometimes a person has to be forced underwater to see if they're going to drown or swim.

You have to get through the rain if you're ever going to see a rainbow.

A life without rain is like the sun without shade.

Moving on doesn't mean forgetting.

Sometimes I guess you need to lose everything before you realize what's really important.

Raising orchids has taught me this: A plant's inability to adapt to a new climate will always be immediately apparent. You'll try a new soil and snip off dead parts from the leaves, maybe try fertilizer. But one day you're going to walk in and find your beautiful orchid slumped over and hugging the earth whence it came.

The word that came to me now was "defiant." Because a person had to be defiant to be able to stand amid the wreckage of her life and instead of shaking a fist, pick up a hammer.

A great man once wrote, "Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and blows up the bonfire." If only I were as eloquent as Mr. de la Rochefoucauld...I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. And I want you. And I need your kiss. And your touch on my skin like a man needs water. Always.

But there is room now in my heart for more memories, carved by a letting go that I could find only by coming home to a place I'd never been.

Every woman needs a daughter to tell her stories to.

Every woman should have a daughter to tell her stories to. Otherwise, the lessons learned are as useless as spare buttons from a discarded shirt. And all that is left is a fading name and the shape of a nose or the color of hair. The men who write the history books will tell you the stories of battles and conquests. But the women will tell you the stories of people's hearts.

Great tragedy gives us opportunities for great kindness.

Mama?" "Yes, Emmy." She traced a rivulet of rain with her finger as it made its journey down the glass. "How do you know when it's been long enough?" Emmy could sense her mother smiling into the phone. "When you relaize that love doesn't have a time span. Only pain does. I think sometimes it's hard to distinguish between the two, so we just hold on to both of them like they're inseparable.

Sometimes hope is all we have, and to lose that is to lose all.

Sometimes we make decisions because it seems to be the only path visible at the moment. It's only later that we see there was more than one path, but the others were blocked from our vision at the time. That's the thing with hindsight, you see. Even if you can see it clearly, there's no going back. It's at that point we need to turn around and stare ahead and make a new life.

There is how we were before, and how we are now, and the time between is spent choosing which doors to open, and which to close.

They say that not matter how old you become, when you are with your siblings, you revert back to childhood.

To give up too easily leads to regret, yet trying and then failing can lead us to second chances if we do not accept it as a failure, but a chance to learn.

We live, we love. These are the choices we are given, to open doors or to close them. It is all we have, and it is enough

when you lose your sails, row.