Top 80 Barbara O'Neal Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “I know how much the ordinary dumb people of the world annoy me, so it’s hard to imagine how much worse it would be if you thought at the speed of light and everyone else thought at the speed of a tricycle.”

— Barbara O'Neal

52. “Jandals,” I repeat. “Like sandals?” “Japanese sandals.”

— Barbara O'Neal

53. “My sister has been dead for nearly fifteen years.”

— Barbara O'Neal

54. “If you let people into the secrets of your life, the worst of it will always be at the forefront of their minds.”

— Barbara O'Neal

55. “As naturally as if we’ve been together a hundred years, Javier picks up my hand and laces his fingers through mine. And even though it’s a little sweaty and I’m not really the hand-holding type, I let him.”

— Barbara O'Neal

56. “I just kiss him. In the rain. On a ferry halfway around the world. Kiss him, and kiss him, and kiss him.”

— Barbara O'Neal

57. “One of the things I love about Hobo is that he is company at night, curling up against the crook of my knees or creeping onto my pillow to rest his face against my head, as if we are two cats. I ache for him at those moments, and I.”

— Barbara O'Neal

58. “My marriage was long ago. It’s to me like a story I read once.”

— Barbara O'Neal

59. “That is a little happy. Not big, not the kind that fills you up and makes you want to laugh.”

— Barbara O'Neal

60. “Resistance will break you. Kill you. The only way to survive is to let go. The world swirls, up and down, around, for endless moments.”

— Barbara O'Neal

61. “I haven’t had a lot of time to fall in love.” “Psssht. Love does not need time.”

— Barbara O'Neal

62. “My sister,” I reply without hesitation. “We had our own little world, just the two of us – it was full of magic and beautiful things.” “Mm,” he says, moving his palm lightly over mine. “What magic?” “Mountain Dew was an actual magic elixir. Do you know Mountain Dew?” He nods. “There were kitchen fairies and mermaids who moved things around to make the grown-ups crazy.”

— Barbara O'Neal

63. “At this point, I have more pens and ink than I could possibly use in three lifetimes, but that’s not the point.”

— Barbara O'Neal

64. “And that’s all there is to say. I bend over and let myself grieve him, grieve the time I lost not speaking to him. I let go of all the things he should have been, and allow myself to love the things he was.”

— Barbara O'Neal

65. “My gift has always been an ability to be happy. It sounds small until you live in the world for a while.”

— Barbara O'Neal

66. “I’d love that.” Instead of rushing in with questions or comments, she waits for me to keep talking, a listening trick she learned at AA that would have made my childhood ten thousand times better.”

— Barbara O'Neal

67. “Only you know what your boundaries are, Maya. You have to find them.”

— Barbara O'Neal

68. “For a moment, I look at all the disasters happening around the world, and my drama seems ridiculous and small, all of my own doing. But it’s not about comparison, as my counselor used to say. My pain is my pain.”

— Barbara O'Neal

69. “It is absolutely love. For me, certainly.”

— Barbara O'Neal

70. “But life doesn’t care if you like something. It gives you choices. It’s up to you to decide which things are right for you.”

— Barbara O'Neal

71. “What did you love as a child?” “Books,” he says with a laugh. “I loved to read more than anything. My father grew angry with me – ‘Javier, you need to run! You need to play with the other boys. Go outside.’” He lifts a shoulder. “I only wanted to lie in the grass and think about other worlds, other places.”

— Barbara O'Neal

72. “Damn, Josie. How did you get so bad?” She lets go of a sad, short laugh. “A day at a time.”

— Barbara O'Neal

73. “I thought maybe there was somebody on the planet who knew what I knew, that a smiling face didn’t always mean well.”

— Barbara O'Neal

74. “When you leaped over the railing, my heart squeezed so hard I could not breathe, because what if” – now he touches my ear, my temple, my wet hair, and pulls me closer – “what if I had lost the chance?”

— Barbara O'Neal

75. “I have never really been able to fully warm up, as is often true of the children of alcoholics after so many years of neglect, I.”

— Barbara O'Neal

76. “For a moment, he only looks at me. “Your quest is powerful. You needn’t apologize for the space it takes.” He covers the hand he’s holding with his other. “That you take. You are important too. Not only your sister.”

— Barbara O'Neal

77. “She was the worst mother of all time. She was the best mother of all time.”

— Barbara O'Neal

78. “Of course I’ll miss him. We can stay in touch through email, and in a few weeks, we’ll forget the urgency of now.”

— Barbara O'Neal

79. “I don’t bring podcasts or music with me. I want to hear whatever the earth has to tell me.”

— Barbara O'Neal

80. “For a faint, foolish moment, I wonder if she is looking toward me too, across time, across the miles, somehow sensing that I am still alive.”

— Barbara O'Neal

81. “Many things, but I have learned to just carry one book, or my bag starts to weigh too much for me to lift!”

— Barbara O'Neal

82. “I take a breath, think of those days, and again find myself telling him the truth. Maybe it’s him, or maybe it’s just time to tell someone.”

— Barbara O'Neal

83. “The only things I’d ever really wanted – peace, calm, predictability. My childhood had been drama enough for one life.”

— Barbara O'Neal

84. “The house was sliding down the cliff long before the earthquake hit, and everywhere the walls were cracked, the floors uneven and full of tripping hazards.”

— Barbara O'Neal