Menna Van Praag Quotes

#1. I can say this: don't give up. Not on love but, more important still, not on you. Never let yourself believe that you are unlovable or flawed in any way. You deserve to be loved. You deserve kind words and an unwavering eye.

Menna Van Praag

#2. Unfortunately most magicians are immune to their own magic. We see behind the veil, we live inside the nuts and bolts, the element of surprise is lost on us. But we can help each other.

Menna Van Praag

#3. It takes great courage and determination, to keep looking for light in all the darkness of life.

Menna Van Praag

#4. When is cake ever for hunger? It's for flavor and, in this case, comfort.

Menna Van Praag

#5. I long for
a little life,
an everyday life,
a splash of sunlight
through a window
a smile from a stranger -
a heart to hold in mine.

Menna Van Praag

#6. Etta grins, compliments swallowed when she sees they're clearly not required.

Menna Van Praag

#7. One proton of faith, three electrons of humility, a neutron of compassion and a bond of honesty," Robert said, winking at his daughter. "What's that?" Cora frowned, confused. Maggie laughed. "That, according to your father, is the molecular structure of love.

Menna Van Praag

#8. But do you really want to spend your life like this, as if you're locked in a library?" "Of course." Alba grins. "I can't think of anything better.

Menna Van Praag

#9. Sometimes acts of faith are called for in life.

Menna Van Praag

#10. Too much analysis kills a thing. Art is created from passion and inspires passion. And passion is beyond reason. Don't you think?

Menna Van Praag

#11. Solving mysteries is as much about having an open mind as keeping your eyes open. Isn't it the same in science?

Menna Van Praag

#12. Amandine Bisset was so passionate for Eliot Walker that tiny silver sparks flew from her fingertips when she touched him. When they made love her whole body filled with white light so bright Amandine believed she might explode.

Menna Van Praag

#13. Great love only comes once in a lifetime, if you're lucky.

Menna Van Praag

#14. In my experience even inanimate objects have a will of their own, and they won't be found until they want to be, until they're good and ready, she says.

Menna Van Praag

#15. There's as much chance of me leaving this kitchen," Stella says, "as you putting down a book.

Menna Van Praag

#16. Do you ever want to run away?" "Sometimes." Milly laughed. "But I also know that not everything I want every moment will actually make me happy.

Menna Van Praag

#17. If you wait until you're ready, you'll be dead," Stella says. "And, as a life strategy, I don't really recommend it.

Menna Van Praag

#18. I can't trust anyone who won't take real cream, or real sugar.

Menna Van Praag

#19. Most people think this world we live in is mundane, but you remind us that it's magical. You wrap reality in the wonder and joy of fiction, until it infuses us and becomes true.

Menna Van Praag

#20. When you follow your heart you allow miraculous possibilities to unfold.

Menna Van Praag

#21. architecture to spiritually uplift and thought it was a very bad idea to build functional, uninspired blocks of flats that would depress both their inhabitants and society at large. And,

Menna Van Praag

#22. The woman is scared, wearing her self-confidence like perfume: a heavy, sultry scent to distract onlookers from the broken, blackened pieces of herself she wants no one else to see.

Menna Van Praag

#23. Do you know where he went?

Menna Van Praag

#24. We all have to make choices," Joan said. "Since we can't have two lives, only one. But, most of those choices we make fresh every day, not just once. So, if you regret something, if you want to change your mind, you usually can.

Menna Van Praag

#25. If two hearts truly love each other then they always will, even when they are apart. Unless they both let go. But if one holds on then it's because the other one hasn't yet let it go either.

Menna Van Praag

#26. You know, some people don't see the things right under their noses. They mistake the everyday for what's ordinary and unimportant.

Menna Van Praag

#27. It's always best to feel fulfilled first, before finding a man. Then you'll know the value of yourself, and you'll hold the key to your own happiness. So you won't turn into a vulnerable, needy, emotional mess the minute you fall in love.

Menna Van Praag

#28. When a woman needs courage, for example, life might throw a few things at her to draw it out. When a woman needs to love herself, she might be lonely while life leaves her without external hearts to hide in.

Menna Van Praag

#29. Noa Sparrow has never been much liked by people and she doesn't much care. That isn't strictly true, of course.

Menna Van Praag

#30. It's a great shame, she thinks, that the heart cannot feel joy without also feeling pain, that it cannot know love without also knowing loss.

Menna Van Praag

#31. I used to wonder why it would hold on," Sebastian says at last, "why it would cause such suffering.

Menna Van Praag

#32. If you get a chance you should marry an archaeologist. I don't suppose there are too many to go around, but it's the best sort of husband to have. The older a woman gets, the more he's interested in her.

Menna Van Praag

#33. I love chocolate cake for breakfast," Peggy stalls, "it sets me up for the day. A little decadence is good for the soul." She's been eating more cake than usual, lately. Impending death does have compensations after all, then, if only chocolate-covered ones.

Menna Van Praag

#34. book brings her comfort still, now soothing different pains, a literary safety blanket Alba can wrap around her fingers and hold until she forgets all the things she wants to forget. Few other novels have been able to offer similar protection against poisoned memories,

Menna Van Praag

#35. It's not just the books Alba craves, it's standing inside a place that houses millions of them. Libraries are Alba's churches, and the university library, containing one edition of every book ever published in England, is her cathedral.

Menna Van Praag

#36. I'm as wrong about life as anyone, but I'm rarely wrong about art, she said.

Menna Van Praag

#37. I don't think tea will quite do, we need something a little more fortifying on such an auspicious occasion. Hot chocolate with fresh cream, that's the thing.

Menna Van Praag

#38. A vast skylight is cut into the ceiling, so she can fall asleep studying the stars. She doesn't know their real names, preferring mysteries to facts,

Menna Van Praag

#39. Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.' " "William Morris.

Menna Van Praag

#40. You're one of life's magicians. You simply haven't realized it yet.

Menna Van Praag

#41. Listen to that voice that tells you not to trust someone, even though he's deliciously charming, remember Wickham and Willoughby and all those cads. And give another man a chance, even though he's not your usual type - remember Mr Knightly and Colonel Brandon and all those quiet heroes.

Menna Van Praag

#42. And, like most people, you're too scared, stubborn or stupid to give yourself what you need until you're shaken awake by something.

Menna Van Praag

#43. She still hasn't cried because to stay in shock feels safer, it keeps a distance between her and the thing she's trying to pretend hasn't happened.

Menna Van Praag

#44. As the thick liquid slips down her throat and into her belly, Alba starts to feel warm and soft, as if the kitchen has just hugged her. And, after a few minutes she isn't scared to tell the truth anymore. At least a little bit of truth.

Menna Van Praag

#45. False love is just wanting someone else, but true love is wanting someone else to be happy.

Menna Van Praag

#46. I know that a heart can hold on for a lifetime, hoping for the impossible, loving, wanting what it will never have.

Menna Van Praag

#47. She is no longer a woman of moderation. She is illuminated. She is fire and ice. She is passion, excitement and joy.

Menna Van Praag

#48. Now you're discovering the great secret of great writing: one line of true feeling is worth a thousand pages of clever thinking.

Menna Van Praag

#49. The only way to stop hurting other people is to stop hurting yourself.

Menna Van Praag

#50. If she can't achieve that, something truly brilliant, then what's the point in living at all? Because in her family, being mediocre, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, simply isn't allowed.

Menna Van Praag

#51. It's already long past midnight, but she won't sleep or stop until it's done, because the air is always thicker with magic, faith and possibility at night.

Menna Van Praag