Top 81 Vanessa Diffenbaugh Quotes
#1. I was a screenwriting and studio art major in college, so even though I don't have any training as a floral designer, I have a very particular visual aesthetic.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#2. I'm talking about the language of flowers. It's from the Victorian era, like your name. If a man gave a young lady a bouquet of flowers, she would race home and try to decode it like a secret message. Red roses mean love; yellow roses infidelity. So a man would have to choose his flowers carefully.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#3. Here you are, obsessed with romantic language-a language invented for expression between lovers-and you use it to spread animosity.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#4. Now, as an adult, my hopes for the future were simple: I wanted to be alone, and to be surrounded by flowers. It seemed, finally, that I might get exactly what I wanted.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#5. You should see the way she smiles when I rattle off the names of the orchids in the greenhouse: oncidium, dendrobium, bulbophyllum, and epidendrum, tickling her face with each blossom. I wouldn't be surprised if 'Orchidaceae' was her first word.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#7. We can become anyone we want to become. It takes focusing on the aspect of ourselves we want to change and reflecting on the beliefs that cause us to act in ways that are counter to the change we seek.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#8. We were pressured to accept kids we were not qualified to handle. And we do that to people all the time, which is why we don't have enough foster parents.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#9. I've always loved the language of flowers. I discovered Kate Greenaway's 'Language of Flowers' in a used bookstore when I was 16 and couldn't believe it was such a well-kept secret. How could something so beautiful and romantic be virtually unknown?
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#10. I could see Grant thinking about this, trying to grasp the chasm between the finality in my voice and his vision of our future, and bridging the divide with a combination of hope and lies.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#11. I would keep her, and raise her, and love her, even if she had to teach me how to do it.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#12. Common thistle is everywhere," she said. "Which is perhaps why human beings are so relentlessly unkind to one another.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#13. You have to really prove yourself to young people, and if your answer is clear and consistent and loving - even if it's angry and disappointed - what's important is that you're being real and honest and not going anywhere.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#14. It wasn't as if the flowers themselves held within them the ability to bring an abstract definition into physical reality. Instead, it seemed that ... expecting change, and the very belief in the possibility instigated a transformation.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#15. We all make mistakes, and we all need second chances. For youth in foster care, these mistakes are often purposeful - if not consciously so; a way to test the strength of a bond and establish trust in a new parent.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#17. I am not only the person who wrote and sold a novel while raising a houseful of biological and foster children; I am also the person who wrote a horrific young adult novel that never sold and gave up on a foster child I couldn't handle - an experience that still haunts me.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#18. The problem is foster youth don't really have this network that other kids have.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#19. I still look up sometimes when I cross the front of the house, expecting to see her.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#21. Though politics is by nature divisive, surely we all can agree that foster children need stability, safety, education, opportunity - and love.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#23. I have spent a lot of time with foster children over the years - kids for whom I have not necessarily acted as a foster parent.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#26. Writing has always been an interest of mine, and 'The Language of Flowers' combined my experience with foster care with something I've always wanted to do.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#27. I believe you can prove everyone wrong, too, Victoria. Your behavior is a choice; it isn't who you are.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#28. I think that the hardest thing about working with young people in foster care who've been through this kind of neglect and abuse is really to convince them that they are worthy of being loved. And I think because often they don't feel worthy of it, that's why they push people away.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#29. I've worked with homeless kids, kids in foster care, and I've never met a kid who couldn't be reached.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#30. My last book, 'The Language of Flowers,' I wrote completely on naptime, when my little kids were asleep.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#31. There's a certain freedom in writing when you don't know if you'll ever have an audience.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#32. You made a mistake. One fucking enormous, stupid mistake. That's all. Now get over it. Buck up and fix it, and if you can't fix it, keep going anyway. It's the only way to live.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#33. As a college student, I worked as a mentor, and that got me involved in working with young people long before I became a foster parent.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#35. There aren't always, especially in low-income communities, the arts and the dance and the drama and the things that can really show a kid, 'Look, even if I'm three years behind in math, there's something I'm good at that can help me be successful in life.'
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#36. We replanted. The loss was substantial, but it was overshadowed completely by losing you.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#37. This time, there was no escape, I could not turn away, could not leave without accepting what I had done. There was only one way to the other side, and that was through the pain.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#38. I had been loyal to nothing except the language of flowers. If I started lying about it, there would be nothing in my life that was beautiful or true.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#40. I'm missing work. We didn't have enough money for preschool. I had a panic attack. I couldn't do it. I became one of those horrible foster parents who give the kids back.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#43. My husband was working as principal of an urban transformation high school - the kind of public charter school determined to do whatever it takes to give its mostly minority, low-income student body the education they need and deserve to be successful in life.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#44. The relentlessness with which these women tried to repair their relationships was foreign to me; I didn't understand why they didn't simply give up.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#45. I don't think there is anything magical about the language of flowers in real life or in my book.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#46. I wanted to write with emotional honesty and tell a story people could connect with. And I wanted people to know how the foster system in America fails children; and how, at 18, they fall through the cracks. Then we can all work together and give support.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#48. My husband and I vowed that after we married and settled down, we would become foster parents - a vow we kept and one that has enriched our lives greatly.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#49. We are more and more into technology. Everything is texting, and everything is instant. Flowers are completely impractical as a method of communication when you could just send a text.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#50. Do you really think you're the only human being alive who is unforgivably flawed? Who's been hurt almost to the point of breaking?
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#51. The only problem," he added, "is that it takes over an hour to cook."
"Over an hour!" The thought of waiting made my head hurt. I hadn't eaten since breakfast, and my stomach was empty to the point of nausea.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#53. Over time, we would learn each other and I would learn to love her like a mother loves a daughter, imperfectly and without roots.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#54. I felt my true, unworthy self to be far away from his clutching grasp, hidden from his admiring gaze.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#55. I did a minor in creative writing in college, but I didn't start writing until I stayed at home with my own children.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#56. It is stories - both real and fictional - that can captivate hearts, change minds and, in the most powerful examples, spur action.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#57. I founded Camellia Network with my dear friend Isis Dallis Keigwin. The mission of our organization is to create a national network that connects every youth aging out of foster care to the critical resources, opportunities, and support they need to thrive in adulthood.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#59. I love Toni Morrison and Jeanette Winterson. 'The Passion' is my favourite book.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#60. Meredith Combs, the social worker responsible for selecting the stream of adoptive families that gave me back, wanted to talk to me about blame.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#61. This is it, you know," she said. "Your life starts here. No one to blame but yourself from here on out.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#62. There's still something so pure and heartfelt and emotional and genuine about a bouquet of flowers that, even with all the advances of technology and the millions of ways we have to communicate with each other, flowers are still relevant in my opinion.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#63. For eight years I dreamed of fire. Trees ignited as I passed them; oceans burned.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#64. I'm very interested in getting inside the heads of people society discards, people on the fringe, especially immigrant kids. We dismiss them without getting into details of who they are.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#67. The most violent and troubling stories become part of our national consciousness about foster care.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#68. Our standards for motherhood are so high that many of us harbor intense, secret guilt for every harsh word we speak to our children, every negative thought that enters our minds.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#69. Coming up with the right questions was even more important than coming up with the right answers.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#72. Hate can be passionate or disengaged; it can come from dislike but also from fear.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#73. We have been trained to broadcast our successes and hide our failures. But the truth is this: our failures humanise us, and they connect us to one another.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#74. Everyone needs something they're good at. You want your kids to be passionate and figure out something they're good at.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#75. My husband and I have been involved with foster youth since our early 20s. Right out of college and not yet married, we spent weekends mentoring a family of young girls.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#76. At Camellia Network, we believe if we can create a way of identifying every young person aging out of foster care, defining what they need, and giving a community of supporters a simple and clear way to fulfill those needs, we can produce radically improved outcomes for youth.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#77. In that moment, we were the same, each of us destroyed by our limited understanding of reality.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#78. Her eyes were open, taking in my tired face ... Her face twitched into what looked like a squinty smile, and in her wordless expression I saw gratitude, and relief, and trust. I wanted, desperately, not to disappoint her.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#79. The birds had been given everything they needed. A home in the thin, pure air: a moment of weightlessness, a reprieve from the gravity of life
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#80. Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
#81. The names of common flowers change from decade to decade, so I spent a lot of time with old outdated dictionaries, with awful flower names like 'mouse-eared chickweed.'
Vanessa Diffenbaugh
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