Top 93 Mary Ann Shaffer Quotes
#2. My neighbour Evangeline Smythe is going to have twins in June. She is none too happy about it, so I am going to ask her to give one of them to me
Mary Ann Shaffer
#3. I did not want to spend my time reading about people who never were, doing things they never did.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#4. We read books, talked books, argued over books and became dearer and dearer to one another.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#5. I thought I was in love (that's the pathetic part - my idea of being in love).
Mary Ann Shaffer
#6. I am to cover the philosophical side of the debate and so far my only thought is that reading keeps you from going gaga.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#7. Miss X has always been a ditherer
she was a ten month baby and has not improved in any material way since then.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#9. All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged
after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#11. Treat a dog right and he'll treat you right ... Cats is different, but I never held it against them.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#12. Remy watched the sea breathe in and out. Then she said, "It would have been better for her not to have such a heart." Yes, but worse for the rest of us.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#13. Oh bless Speranza, for giving her son such a preposterous name as Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#14. Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#16. Naturally curly hair is a curse, and don't ever let anyone tell you different.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#17. There was Isola in a mad hat and a purple shawl pinned with a glittering brooch. She was smiling fixedly in the wrong direction and I loved her instantly.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#18. People don't know how chickens can turn on you, but they can
just like mad dogs.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#19. I have a tiny infant of an idea, much too frail and defenseless to risk describing, even to you ... I am going to coddle it and feed it and see if I can make it grow.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#20. All his flowers have been awaiting me on my arrival. I don't know whether to feel flattered or hunted.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#21. He didn't say much at our first meeting - nor at any of our meetings since, come to think of it - but left him into a room, and everyone in it seems to breathe a sigh of relief. I have never in my life had that effect on anyone; I can't imagine why not.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#22. Think of it! We could have gone on longing for one another and pretending not to notice forever. This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#23. She is one of those ladies who is more beautiful at sixty than she could possibly have been at twenty. (how I hope someone says that about me someday)!
Mary Ann Shaffer
#24. You can purchase my silence with torrid details, you know.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#25. All I could do was scream, "How dare you! What have you DONE?! Put my books back!
Mary Ann Shaffer
#26. I am no proof against compliments, especially compliments about my writing. I'll be delighted to dine with you.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#27. What a blight that woman is. Do you happen to know why? I lean toward a malignant fairy at her christening.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#28. Your questions regarding that gentleman are very delicate, very subtle, very much like being smacked in the head with a mallet ... it's a tuba among the flutes.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#29. I told him that if one had to ask which, it generally meant neither.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#31. He wants me to stay in London and go to restaurants and theaters and marry him like a reasonable person.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#32. Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#33. Oh dear, I want to nuzzle into my sofa, but I have to get up and put on an evening dress.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#34. He's got that way of believing his opinion is the truth, but he's not disagreeable about it. He's too sure he's right to bother being disagreeable.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#35. I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#36. Those times, I tried to think of something happy, something I'd liked - but not something I loved, for that made it worse.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#37. I could tell you more about reading and how it perked up our spirits while the Germans were here.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#39. My friend Mrs. Maugery bought a pamphlet that once belonged to you, too. It is called 'Was There a Burning Bush? A Defense of Moses and the Ten Commandments'. She liked your margin note, "Word of God or crowd control???" Did you ever decide which?
Mary Ann Shaffer
#40. Life goes on. What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#41. Do you suppose the St. Swithin's furnace-man was my one true love? Since I never spoke to him, it seems unlikely, but at least it was a passion unscathed by disappointment.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#42. She was showing me her treasures, Sophie
her eyes did not leave my face once. We were both so solemn, and I, for once, didn't start crying; I just held out my arms. She climbed right into them and under the covers with me
and went sound asleep.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#43. The old adage--humor is the best way to make the unbearable bearable--may be true.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#45. My worries travel about my head on their well-worn path, and it is a relief to put them on paper.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#46. Juliet, none of your margin notes! Sophie, dear, don't let her drink coffee while she reads. And off we'd go with new books to read.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#47. I did not throw 'The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation' at the audience. I threw it at the elocution mistress. I meant to cast it at her feet, but I missed.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#48. He's always had more than his fair share of what we call cheek and what Americans call can-do spirit.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#49. I swear, Sophie, I think there's something wrong with me. Every man I meet is intolerable. Perhaps I should set my sights lower[ ... ]
Mary Ann Shaffer
#50. He is so shy, Juliet. He always has been-I don't think anybody's ever been in love with him, or him with anybody before, so he'd not know the right thing to do about it. It'd be just like him to hide away mementos and never say a word. I despair for him, I do.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#51. I myself have never had one, but now I can picture one. I didn't like Wuthering Heights at first, but the minute that specter, Cathy, scrabbled her bony fingers on the window glass - I was grasped by the throat and not let go. With that Emily I could hear Heathcliff's pitiful cries upon the moors.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#52. I never met a man half so true as a dog. Treat a dog right, and he'll treat you right. He'll keep you company, be your friend, and never ask you no questions. Cats is different, but I never held that against 'em.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#53. Will Thisbee gave me The Beginner's Cook-Book for Girl Guides. It was just the thing; the writer assumes you know nothing about cookery and writes useful hints - When adding eggs, break the shells first.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#55. I have gone to [this bookshop] for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadn't known I wanted.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#57. I hope, too, that my book will illuminate my belief that love of art - be it poetry, storytelling, painting, sculpture, or music - enables people to transcend any barrier man has yet devised.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#59. He had no imagination either-fatal for one engaged in child-rearing
Mary Ann Shaffer
#60. Boredom is a powerful reason, and the prospect of fun is a powerful draw - especially when you are young.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#61. Never met a man half so true as a dog. Treat a dog right and he'll treat you right - he'll keep you company, be your friend, never ask you no questions. Cats is different, but I never held that against them.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#62. I sometimes think I prefer suitors in books rather than right in front of me. How awful, backward, cowardly, and mentally warped that will be if it turns out to be true.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#63. After all, what's good enough for Austen ought to be good enough for anyone.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#65. Did any of you ever think that along about thet ime the notion of a soul gave out, Freud popped up with the ego to take its place?
Mary Ann Shaffer
#66. As to that Sidney, he sounds a very fine man - but bossy. It's a failing common in men.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#67. Then i imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#68. When I got up this morning the sea was full of sun pennies - and now it all seems to be covered in lemon scrim. Writers ought to live far inland or next to the city dump, if they are ever to get any work one. Or perhaps they need to be stronger-minded than I am.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#69. Grandpa, that's something I never am." I asked him, "What's that?" And he said, "Lonesome in my spirits." Eli to Eben
Mary Ann Shaffer
#70. I've read fast - too impatient not to. But I'll go back and start over again - reading more slowly this time, so I can take everything in.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#72. Friends, show me a man who hates himself, and I'll show you a man who hates his neighbors more! He'd have to
you'd not grant anyone else something you can't have for yourself
no love, no kindness, no respect!
Mary Ann Shaffer
#73. But the truth is that I'm gloomy - gloomier than I ever was during the war. Everything is so broken, Sophie: the roads, the buildings, the people. Especially the people.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#74. One year as his wife, and id have become one of those abject, quaking women who look at their husbands when someone asks them a question. I've always despised that type, but I see how it happens now
Mary Ann Shaffer
#75. I miss the feeling that we understood one another, but I begin to think that was only my delusion all along.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#76. Women like poetry. A soft word in their ears and they melt - a grease spot on the grass.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#77. That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#78. I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#79. Later, I came to see that Mr. Dickens and Mr. Wordsworth were thinking of men like me when they wrote their words. But most of all, I believe that Mr. Shakespeare was. Mind you, I cannot always make sense of what he says, but it will come.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#80. I was able to un-stick my tongue from the roof of my mouth after the first two minutes and began to have quite a good time.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#81. On the page, I'm perfectly charming, but that's just a trick I learned. It has nothing to do with me.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#83. I think you learn more if you're laughing at the same time.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#84. I should pity you, did I not know, that the Mind will make friends of any thing. A Mind that can make friends of any thing - I thought of that often during the war.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#85. My worries travel around in my head on their well worn path
Mary Ann Shaffer
#86. I suppose I do have a suitor, but I'm not really used to him yet. He's terribly charming and he plies me with delicious meals, but I sometimes think I prefer suitors in books rather than right in front of me.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#87. Sorrow has rushed over the world like the waters of the Deluge, and it will take time to recede. But already, there are small islands of - hope? Happiness? Something like them, at any rate.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#88. Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done, to have advanced true friends? It isn't. I hope, wherever she is, she has that in her mind.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#89. Would you like to hear of my first sight of the Germans? I'll use adjectives to make it more lively. I usually don't.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#90. Isola doesn't approve of small talk and believes in breaking the ice by stomping on it.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#91. In a good mood I call my hair Chestnut with Gold Glints. In a bad mood, I call it mousy brown
Mary Ann Shaffer
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