Paula McLain Quotes
It was our favorite part of the day, this in-between time, and it always seemed to last longer than it should--a magic and lavender space unpinned from the hours around it, between worlds.
Maybe happiness was an hourglass already running out, the grains tipping, sifting past each other. Maybe it was a state of mind.
Sometimes I wish we could rub out all of our mistakes and start fresh, from the beginning,' I said. 'And sometimes I think there isn't anything to us but our mistakes.
I miss good old-fashioned honorable people just trying to make something of life. Simply, without hurting anyone else. I know that makes me a sap.
She was also incredibly confident, with a way of moving and talking that communicated that she didn't need anyone to tell her she was beautiful or worthwhile.
I'd had my share of rain. My mother's illness ... had weighed on me, but the years before had been heavy, too. I was only twenty eight.
I knew that I could hate him all I wanted for the way he was hurting me, but I couldn’t ever stop loving him, absolutely, for what he was.
I preferred to look at the sea, which said nothing and never made you feel alone.
Though I often looked for one, I finally had to admit that there could be no cure for Paris.
At twenty-eight I'd had a handful of beaux, but had only been in love once, and that had been awful enough to make me doubt men and myself for a good long while.
But when Bumby nursed, his fist clutching the fabric of my robe, his eyes soft and bottomless and locked on mine, as if I were the very heart of his universe, I couldn't help but melt into him.
I didn't want to be a sweet boy's sweet girlfriend. I wanted to be Fawn's equal, the kind of girl who stood up for herself and took care of business, who cut guys loose when it was required.
All that was left for me was a terrible kind of paralysis, this waiting game, this heartbreak game.
I would gladly have climbed out of my skin and into his that night, because I believed that was what love meant.
But in the end, fighting for a love that was already gone felt like trying to live in the ruins of a lost city.
To marry was to say you believed in the future and in the past, too-that history and tradition and hope could stay knit together to hold you up.
Happiness is so awfully complicated, but freedom isn't. You're either tied down or you're not.
And that's when he finally tells me his name is Ernest. I'm thinking of giving it away, though. Ernest is so dull, and Hemingway? Who wants a Hemingway?
It gave me a sharp kind of sadness to think that no matter how much I loved him and tried to put him back together again, he might stay broken forever.
Books could be an incredible adventure. I stayed under my blanket and barely moved, and no one would have guessed how my mind raced and my heart soared with stories.
We can only go to the limits of ourselves. Anything more and we give too much away. Then we're not good for anyone.
Sometimes when you're hurting, it helps to throw yourself at something that will take your weight.
There are some who said I should have fought harder or longer than I did for my marriage, but in the end fighting for love that was already gone felt like trying to live in the ruins of a lost city.
He was a humorist, and everyone knew the funny writers were the most serious sort under their skins.
They’d scared me and had me thinking about what it meant to be really strong, on my own terms—not just fit and brown from the sun, not just flexible and accommodating.
Not everyone believed in marriage then. To marry was to say you believed in the future and in the past, too - that history and tradition and hope could stay knit together to hold you up.
