Top 40 Patti Callahan Henry Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “Cheating and lying aren’t struggles, they’re reasons to break up.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

2. “The right thing at the wrong time is never the right thing.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

3. “What fills the eye fills the heart.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

4. “Over time, hidden truths morph in the dark soil of deceit into something much worse.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

5. “It is not about how it ends; it is about the journey. The full story. You have to know the full story to care about or know the ending.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

6. “The lowest ebb brings the highest tide.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

7. “If only it were so easy to pick up the broken pieces of life, glue them back together, and cover them with paint like nothing had ever happened.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

8. “When you know you love someone, when you know it’s finally the right time, you don’t just wait around for the right words, you just say the sentences even if they’re all mixed up and imperfect.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

9. “Let the story settle inside you. Let it move and twist around until you see what it has to say to you.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

10. “There were some things that needed to be said even if the person you were saying them to didn’t understand; words that must be released from their trapped place where their flapping to get out could cause internal damage.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

11. “You don’t always need proof to know something.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

12. “Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you. – Hafez.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

13. “Sometimes we tell our stories and sometimes our stories tell us.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

14. “There are trials and mistakes and even wars along the path of marriage.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

15. “Grief wraps around people, takes them to a place they would not go otherwise.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

16. “The written word held a power she almost revered: to be able to write so as to influence the hearts and minds of other readers seemed nothing short of a miracle.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

17. “Look up from that phone. Maybe you won’t feel so brokenly special.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

18. “There are always consequences to the truth.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

19. “This is the thing we must guard against: that others’ expectations, especially our families’, do not become our own.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

20. “We have to know the truth about the past to discover out future.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

21. “Hell is the absence of people you long for.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

22. “We do what we can with what we know at the time, and with what we believe.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

23. “Not very long ago and not very far away, there once was and still is an invisible place right here with us. And if you are born knowing, you will find your way through the woodlands to the shimmering doors that lead to the land made just and exactly for you.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

24. “It wasn’t Lucas’s fault that he wanted me to be someone else. I’d pretended to be that someone else for a very long time.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

25. “If you were born knowing, and to be honest we all are, you will know how to find your way through the woodlands to the shimmering doors that are meant for you. They lead to the land made for you.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

26. “She did the best she could.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

27. “She loved knowing why things happened, because if she did, it was quite possible she could keep them from happening again.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

28. “I don’t know what to say. It hurts. It’s a terrible relief, and I feel guilty about that. It’s sad and it’s sudden and it feels as if the earth has shifted beneath my feet, but I can’t see what that changes. Maybe it doesn’t change anything, but maybe it changes everything. I have no idea. I feel foggy and disconnected, but I’m okay.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

29. “To honor the seasons, curious one. To honor each other. To gather. To remember that we are part of something much bigger than the petty things of today, bigger than gossip and – ” “War.” “Yes, we are part of something even bigger than war. Something that goes on and on and was celebrated before us and will be celebrated after us.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

30. “Beautiful untrue things. We all know when we read about Narnia or Middle Earth or Wonderland – we know it’s not true but it’s so beautiful, so damn beautiful that we believe it while we’re there.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

31. “Telling stories is one of the greatest powers that we possess. It’s like a dream you can fill with what you want. And the knight doesn’t always have to save the princess; sometimes she saves herself.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

32. “Stories and books tend to find their rightful owners.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

33. “The heart can hold much joy and great sorrow at the same time. It’s a mystery. And it’s also true.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

34. “Sometimes life breaks your heart to give you the best art.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

35. “What a fairy tale is meant to do,” she said, “if it’s meant to do anything at all, Tolkien says, is give us new perspective on our world, the consolation of a happy ending. A recovery of sorts. Like we leave that world to see ours anew.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

36. “Okay, here are the three questions. One; What do you want to be doing when you die? Two: If you die today, what will you regret not having done? And three: What do you want your tombstone to say?”

— Patti Callahan Henry

37. “That’s how easy it was to confess. You just say it. You just drop it onto the table and tell the truth and what comes, comes, she thought.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

38. “Yards out past the cliffs, the sea thrashes the jagged and steep rocks with all its might, then retreats, only to try again. These broken walls and half crumbled towers had been seen by a young boy named Jack, who turned it into a magical place where goodness and love conquered winter, and a lion rose from the dead, and four children unexpectedly sat on royal thrones.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

39. “During those long afternoon walks in nature he came to believe that one must shut the mouth and open the eyes and ears, for nature only asked of him to look, listen, and attend.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

40. “Despair leads us to stories, of course. We invent them so we can live in a world with meaning.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

41. “Megs, every human interaction is eternally important.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

42. “Forgiveness is a whisper of possibility, of openness. It was an act of restoration, an act of healing, an act of empathy. Forgiveness, I understood, was only the beginning of what might come next, not the end of what had already happened.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

43. “It means the kind of love that obliterates all sense and logic and has the world appearing just as it is – completely and utterly magical. This word is the knowing that all things are one and that we are connected to all things – the love that created you and the love from which we came and the love to which we will one day return. The greatest love.”

— Patti Callahan Henry

44. “A pagan,” Bridie said, “is nothing more than someone who still believes in the very animation of nature and uses the old stories to build new ones.”

— Patti Callahan Henry