The ghosts that exert the most power in people__ lives-at least, the people I know__end to be of their own making, and consist of equal parts regret and old fears and just plain missing somebody.
And she knew that this was the thing that would harm Dionne in the end, not her foolishness but the foolhardy way in which she clung to her own terrible ideas. She knew that this was Avril's undoing, not that she'd made the wrong choices, but that she'd been so unwilling to let anyone in to see the lie of her marriage, this masking was worse than the original mistake. Sixty-three years on this earth has taught Hyacinth that it wasn't so much the mistakes that people made but how flexible they were in the aftermath that made all the difference in how their lives turned out. It was the women who held too tightly to the dream of their husband's fidelity who unraveled, the parents who clasped their children too close who lost them, the me who grieved too deeply the lives they'd wanted and would never have who saw their sadness consume them. Hyacinth worried about Dionne because of her hard way of being in the world, the way she could only see the world through the lens of her own flawed feelings.
The Star Side of Bird Hill
Quote Detail
And she knew that this was the thing that would harm Dionne in the end, not her foolishness but the foolhardy way in which she clung to her own terrible ideas. She knew that this was Avril's undoing, not that she'd made the wrong choices, but that she'd been so unwilling to let anyone in to see the lie of her marriage, this masking was worse than the original mistake. Sixty-three years on this earth has taught Hyacinth that it wasn't so much the mistakes that people made but how flexible they were in the aftermath that made all the difference in how their lives turned out. It was the women who held too tightly to the dream of their husband's fidelity who unraveled, the parents who clasped their children too close who lost them, the me who grieved too deeply the lives they'd wanted and would never have who saw their sadness consume them. Hyacinth worried about Dionne because of her hard way of being in the world, the way she could only see the world through the lens of her own flawed feelings.
Quick Answer
What this quote page tells you
This canonical quote page keeps the full saying, the attributed author, any linked work, and the topic tags together so the quote can be cited from one stable URL.
Related Quotes
More quote cards from the same area
This isn__ how things were supposed to happen. I was supposed to be me. Not this.
No child should ever be too sad to play.
The amusements of life, he argued, should be accepted with the same philosophy as its ills. ("The Striding Place")
There were happy days, with watermelon, and sad days of whiskey.
Then he thought himself unhappy, but happiness was all in the future; now he felt that the best happiness was already in the past.