Top 35 Fiona Valpy Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

— Fiona Valpy

2. “Adhhab bisalam.”

— Fiona Valpy

3. “The ocean is big enough to take your grief and keep it safe for you, freeing up space in your heart for other things.”

— Fiona Valpy

4. “Je vous en prie, Madame.”

— Fiona Valpy

5. “So, is it wrong to dream, to want the things we don’t have?’ ‘No, my darling, never give up your dreams. But just make sure they don’t distract you too much from the good things that there are in your day-to-day life, even if that life is by no means perfect. Because there always are good things.”

— Fiona Valpy

6. “I’ve read that the currents of trauma run deep in families. They can be inherited, passed down the generations from one to the next, ruining lives as they go. Perhaps that’s what happened to my mother. But I won’t let it happen to me. Now that I understand where that trauma came from, I can see it for what it is. And by finding the courage to turn and face it, I have the opportunity to stop it in its tracks.”

— Fiona Valpy

7. “I don’t know if I would ever want to be married, unless the man was very kind like my papa or Felix. I think I’d probably rather have animals instead, like Josephine Baker.”

— Fiona Valpy

8. “She sees that your heart is filled with grief. You need to go to the ocean. Write the names of the things you’ve lost on stones you will find there and then cast them away into the waters. The ocean is big enough to take your grief and keep it safe for you, freeing up space in your heart for other things. The dreamseller says this is an important lesson for you to learn now and you must remember it. It will help you later in life.’ While we were having a cup of mint tea and some.”

— Fiona Valpy

9. “You smell of honey and sunshine. Even after all that. The darkness of this world can’t dim the light that shines from you, Eliane.”

— Fiona Valpy

10. “I think of my mum and the Carmichaels and all those other people who lost so much in the war. They were a generation who had to get used to goodbyes. I realise how fortunate I was to be born just as the war ended. into a generation that knew only the optimism of a peace-filled future.”

— Fiona Valpy

11. “How can I escape the same fate? In a world that seems filled with fear and panic, what can I do to stop the cycle repeating itself? Do I carry that same fragility in my own genetic make-up? Am I helpless, or is it possible for me to retake control of my life?”

— Fiona Valpy

12. “I couldn’t believe that something could look so very ordinary and unremarkable on the outside and hide such a beautiful treasure within.”

— Fiona Valpy

13. “You can’t let terror win. It becomes all the more important to resist the urge to give in to fear.”

— Fiona Valpy

14. “Until now, I have allowed the legacy of trauma to imprison my spirit.”

— Fiona Valpy

15. “So, if we cling on to life so hard and value it so much, how deep do depression and despair have to drag someone before they reach a place where they can’t bear to go on?”

— Fiona Valpy

16. “There’s always something to be done, no matter how small and insignificant our efforts may seem. We have to resist.”

— Fiona Valpy

17. “But you see, Kendra dear, you have a choice. You can either let the pain overwhelm you, defining your life from that point on – perhaps even ending it or, at best, consigning you to a living death – or you can find a way to bear it, to carry it with you and still go on living. As you well know yourself, you can’t always choose what life throws at you. But you always have a choice in how you deal with it.”

— Fiona Valpy

18. “It’s a large book called a thesaurus and it is full of interesting suggestions for alternative, different, unconventional, unorthodox, out of the ordinary, substitute vocabulary. As.”

— Fiona Valpy

19. “True forgiveness takes enormous strength and very great courage. A person who can forgive is one of the bravest people there is. It may seem impossible, but you have to do it, Evie. Even if it means you have to keep on trying to forgive, and go on forgiving again, every single day of your.”

— Fiona Valpy

20. “I’m not just searching for who they are. I’m trying to find out who I am, too.”

— Fiona Valpy

21. “Can we really imagine how it must feel to be so afraid of what lies behind you that you are prepared to throw yourself headlong into an unknown that is going to be filled with danger and loneliness? Leaving behind your family and your culture and seeking something better in a land where you are not welcome and you are not understood?”

— Fiona Valpy

22. “It’s funny, isn’t it, how the strands of our lives interweave themselves in unexpected ways?”

— Fiona Valpy

23. “It is the loss of those you love that is unbearable.”

— Fiona Valpy

24. “Then one by one they raised their faces to the sky. ‘Like a field of sunflowers’.”

— Fiona Valpy

25. “And it dawns on me that perhaps there are very many different ways to keep someone alive in your heart.”

— Fiona Valpy

26. “But if we leave out some of the important bits of the truth – or choose to ignore them – then surely we are living a lie? And that is no way to live at all, is it?”

— Fiona Valpy

27. “For most of my life, I have dwelt in a sort of no man’s land where loneliness has been an easier option than trying to fit in.”

— Fiona Valpy

28. “Do you remember what I said last weekend? That they’ve taken our voices, as well as our country.’ She raised her eyes to his. ‘They can’t silence us forever, though. The day will come, eventually, when the truth can be told.”

— Fiona Valpy

29. “I know how living in a state of fear creates an inertia. It saps your strength and drains your energy, until you become trapped like a fly in a spider’s web. The more you struggle, at first, the tighter the silken threads are woven around you, until finally escape becomes impossible.”

— Fiona Valpy

30. “The cross is just as much a part of the oak as its branches and its roots, just as my scars are now a part of me, for ever more. And yet, there is resilience. The body finds a way to close the wounds, to live with the scars. To heal. And, yes, even to grow.”

— Fiona Valpy

31. “Some things are impossible to move on from – instead, you have to find a way to live with them. The secret is to open your heart, even as it breaks. Because that’s when you discover that you have the capacity to contain it all – the pain and the love, the dark and the light. Just like the ocean. Finding the strength to do so can be quite a challenge, and it takes time. But, in the end, it’s facing up to the truth that will set you free.”

— Fiona Valpy

32. “Do you wish you’d done anything differently?’ I ask. ‘Of course. With hindsight we always see things so much more clearly. But at the time we muddle through, trying to make the best decisions we can, but making all sorts of mistakes along the way. I think the biggest mistake I made was not realising that there are so many different kinds of love. And that there is room for them all. No one excludes the others.”

— Fiona Valpy

33. “We always know our firsts: the first faltering steps a child takes; a first day at school; a first kiss. But we rarely know our lasts until it’s too late.”

— Fiona Valpy

34. “I see now that it’s one of the paradoxes of life that if we love it so much that we are frightened of losing it, it can make us live a half-life, too scared to get out there and live whole-heartedly because we have too much to lose. In the same way, I think I protect myself in relationships, too scared to love whole-heartedly because then there would be too much to lose there too.”

— Fiona Valpy

35. “I have my own problems, that’s for sure, but that still shouldn’t stop me from trying to help those whose problems are even greater than mine.”

— Fiona Valpy

36. “She sees that your heart is filled with grief. You need to go to the ocean. Write the names of the things you’ve lost on stones you will find there and then cast them away into the waters. The ocean is big enough to take your grief and keep it safe for you, freeing up space in your heart for other things.”

— Fiona Valpy

37. “What is this world where human beings can be the perpetrators of such inhumanity against their own kind?”

— Fiona Valpy

38. “How can I ever see the world as a good and kind place to be when I know what obscene cruelty humanity is capable of?”

— Fiona Valpy