Top 100 Paula McLain Quotes

#1. he grinned a grin that began in his eyes and went everywhere at once. It was devastating.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #29151
#2. Did you ever think it could be like this? The way we're happening to each other?

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #31542
#3. I get why no one bothers with the usual rules," ... "I was in the war, too, you know. Nothing looks or feels the same anymore, so what's the point?" ... "Still, I miss good old-fashioned honorable people just trying to make something of life. Simply, without hurting anyone else.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #34295
#4. and was there for the birth, on 25 February

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #42471
#5. I never thought I'd get married," I told Boy as he poured for us. Scotch spilled into the squat glasses with reassuring lapping noises. "I should have left well enough alone." "You don't need to explain.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #71173
#6. A week passes but it feels as if he's never been anywhere else. It's one of the things war does to you. Everything you see works to replace moments and people from your life before, until you can't remember why any of it mattered. It doesn't help if you're a soldier. The effect is the same.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #72396
#7. Don't be difficult, Denys," Nell chided. "All women like a little flattery from time to time." "What if they didn't? What if they simply liked themselves and no one needed to bend backwards to flatter them? Wouldn't it all be simpler then?

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #80261
#8. We stood there, locked and lovely as statues in a garden.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #85166
#9. People belong together to each other only as long as they believe. He stopped believing.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #119100
#10. 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.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #150662
#11. I've never travelled," I told her. "Oh, you absolutely should," she insisted, "if only so that you can come home and really see it for what it is. That's my favourite part.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #151147
#12. We'd given up trying to fool anyone, even ourselves.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #162771
#13. Only the day before, Cockie's dark joke wouldn't have included me, but now it did. "Is love always such a mess, do you suppose?

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #175771
#14. All her stories seemed to involve rowboats and ukuleles, full moons and campfires and grog. I was desperately jealous.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #180852
#15. Don't tell readers what to think. Let the action speak for itself.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #185621
#16. I met the devil,' Ernest said, finishing his glass of wine, 'and he doesn't give a damn about art.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #202574
#17. The pilgrims and the lost often did look the same,

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #213503
#18. But in the end, fighting for a love that was already gone felt like trying to live in the ruins of a lost city.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #218574
#19. How dreadful it would be if everything toppled you and you folded in.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #230219
#20. There was nowhere to go in the house to escape my dark thoughts.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #232878
#21. Are you always this wise, Ruth?"
"Only when it comes to other people's lives.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #289273
#22. I felt a sense of anticipation of being on the verge of something interesting.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #328723
#23. They had as good a shot at making it as anyone did, but what if marriage didn't solve anything and didn't save anyone even a little bit? What then?

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #342445
#24. Denys understood how nothing ever holds still for us, or should. The trick is learning to take things as they come and fully, too, with no resistance or fear, not trying to grip them too tightly or make them bend.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #359304
#25. The things of the world knew so much more than we did and lived them more truly. The thorn trees had no grief or fear. The constellations didn't fight or hold themselves back, nor did the translucent hook of the moon. Everything was momentary and endless.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #364642
#26. When I saw the rats the first time, I wanted to drop my basket where it was and run away, but we weren t rich enough for symbolic gestures. So I walked.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #364835
#27. Walk through your sorrow, my daughter, it hardly matters as long as you walk to where you want to be.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #365125
#28. Searching out something important and going astray look exactly the same for a while, in fact.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #367659
#29. He didn't know how love managed to be a garden one moment and war the next. He was at war now, his loyalty tested at every turn.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #414717
#30. It was august. for years it was august ... . there was heat like wet gauze and a high, white sky and music coming from everywhere at once.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #417183
#31. 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.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #423557
#32. The worst events always have the thrust of accidents, as if they come out of nowhere. But that's just lack of perspective.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #430080
#33. It struck me how comfortable I felt with him, as if we were old friends or had already done this many times over, him handing me pages with his heart on his sleeve - he couldn't pretend this work didn't mean everything to him - me reading his words, quietly amazed by what he could do.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #439930
#34. 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.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #481728
#35. They sat in the cafes with their fresh faces and long lovely legs and waited for something outrageous to happen.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #485732
#36. You're making something new. Don't forget that when it starts to hurt.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #485796
#37. People interest me so much. They're such wonderful puzzles. Think of it. Half the time we've no idea what we're doing, but we live anyway.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #499079
#38. Maybe that's the secret to surviving all sorts of trouble, knowing who you are apart from it, I mean.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #500675
#39. Her absence was still so loud and so heavy, I ached with it, feeling hollow and lost. I didn't know how to forget my mother any more than my father knew how he might comfort me.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #517836
#40. swallowed. My ears felt as if

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #546679
#41. Sometimes when you're hurting, it helps to throw yourself at something that will take your weight.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #552612
#42. Things come that we never would have predicted for ourselves or even guessed at. And yet they change us for ever.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #648311
#43. It's important to test your nerve occasionally,' she said. 'It keeps you young.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #655963
#44. You make your life with someone and you love that person and you think it's enough. But it's never enough, is it?
I couldn't say. I don't know anything about love anymore.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #663135
#45. I had come alive here ... this was my home, and though one day it would all trickle through my fingers like so much red dust, for as long as childhood lasted it was a heaven fitted exactly to me. A place I knew by heart. The one place in the world I'd been made for.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #666410
#46. They love me like a pack of wolves.


Ernest

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #667632
#47. He stared into his coffee, thinking quietly. "But you've never been afraid of anything, have you?"
"I have, though," I said, surprised at my own emotion. "I've been terrified... I just haven't let it stop me

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #669757
#48. The first time I saw a narcissus pushing through ice and thriving, I thought it was perfect and wanted that kind of determination for myself.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #707453
#49. He'd left me for a time. He'd doubted me, but now he was mine again and I wanted to keep him here in a tangle of limbs and bedsheets until I'd quieted every last voice and we were only right again.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #712797
#50. He had writing the way other people had religion

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #765764
#51. I'd never met anyone so vibrant or alive. He moved like light.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #769519
#52. Maybe no one can know how it is for anyone else.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #775129
#53. He pulled me into the room and way lay on the featherbed and made love. And I was reminded of what was best about us.
How very easy and natural we could be as bodies, with no sharp angles or missteps and no need for talking.
How in bed, as nowhere else, he was my favorite animal and I was his.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #823896
#54. How close people could be to us when they had gone as far away as possible, to the edges of the map. How unforgettable.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #852305
#55. And after a time, I stopped struggling even internally against the prescribed quietness.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #867234
#56. He lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply, the tip flaring an angry red. Isn't love a beautiful goddamn liar?

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #892297
#57. I also liked to look around at the houses surrounding the park and wonder about the people who filled them, what kinds of marriages they had and how they loved or hurt each other on any given day, and if they were happy, and whether they thought happiness was a sustainable thing.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #914603
#58. I had forged her myself, out of brokenness, learning to love wildness instead of fearing it. To thrive on the exhilaration of the hunt, charging headlong into the world even when it hurt to do it.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #919218
#59. I close my eyes an lean into Ernest, smelling bourbon and soap, tobacco and damp cotton - and everything about this moment is so sharp and lovely, I do something completely out of character and just let myself have it.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #981667
#60. He would eat me here or drag me off to a glade or valley only he knew of, a place from which I'd never return. The last thought I remember having was This is how it feels, then. This is what it means to be eaten by a lion.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1006529
#61. Sometimes I've thought it's only our challenges that sharpen us, and change us, too - a mile-long runway and nineteen hundred pounds

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1009859
#62. A new thing is good, though it be a sore place.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1018693
#63. I loved him for a full year and then, in one night, all my wishing came apart.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1027884
#64. I would gladly have climbed out of my skin and into his that night, because I believed that was what love meant.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1042804
#65. 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.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1048436
#66. I like to think I'm the kind of girl who'll drink anything," I said, " but maybe not from a shoe.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1057050
#67. Knowing he was suffering pained me. That's the way love tangles you up. I couldn't stop loving him, and couldn't shut off the feelings of wanting to care for him - but I also didn't have to run to answer his letters. I was hurting, too, and no one was running to me.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1072876
#68. 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.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1153971
#69. Twende tu, she called out in Swahili as she buckled her helmet. I am going.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1212880
#70. It was terrible to feel so empty, as if I were nothing. Why couldn't I be happy? And just what was happines anyway?

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1286990
#71. I couldn't understand why Frank would want to spend time with this crowd. They were bored, naughty children with highballs and morphine and sex for their toys. People were toys, too.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1311835
#72. More and more I find myself at a loss for words and didn't want to hear other people talking either. Their conversations seemed false and empty. I preferred to look at the sea, which said nothing and never made you feel alone.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1313815
#73. There are things I didn't see before, like how nice it is to have someone around. Not the white knight whisking you away, but the fellow who sits at your table every night and tells you what he is thinking.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1329057
#74. There are things we find only at our lowest depths. The idea of wings and then wings themselves. An ocean worth crossing one dark mile at a time. The whole of the sky.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1343246
#75. 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?

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1386258
#76. 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.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1397542
#77. What am I meant for then?" "How wonderful that question is, Beru." He smiled mysteriously. "And as you did not die on this day, you have more time in which to answer it.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1399159
#78. On December 8, 1921, when the Leopoldina set sail for Europe, we were on board. Our life together had finally begun. We held on to each other and looked out at the sea. It was impossibly large and full of beauty and danger in equal parts-and we wanted it all.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1407442
#79. Oh." It seemed I'd surprised him. "There isn't a lot of that kind of thinking around here."
"Of course there is," I told him, trying to draw a smile. "It's just usually a man who's doing it.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1426585
#80. But love is love. It makes you do terribly stupid things.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1433872
#81. This is why there is poetry. For days like these.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1503696
#82. There was only today to throw yourself into without thinking about tomorrow, let alone forever. To keep you from thinking, there was liquor, an ocean's worth at least, all the usual vices and plenty of rope to hang yourself with. Love is a beautiful liar.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1507594
#83. about the biting white ants that moved in menacing ribbons over the plains, or the vipers or the sun, which sometimes pulsed so brightly it seemed to want to flatten you or eat you alive.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1534631
#84. We were surrounded by people on the platform, but we were entirely alone.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1557897
#85. reached behind me to adjust the stockings again. "Your mother doesn't like me." "She just doesn't want to lose me. That's how mothers are.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1573029
#86. In some ways, it was as if nothing had changed. Our bodies knew each other so well we didn't have to think about how to move. But when it was over and we lay still, I felt a terrible sadness come down because I loved him as much as I ever did.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1612033
#87. It was as if we'd pressed ourselves together until his bones passed through mine and we were the same person, ever so briefly.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1613160
#88. though I leaned against him and tried to meet the kiss and to take it in, I couldn't quite feel it. I couldn't feel us. -

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1630065
#89. The way I see it, how can you really say you'll love a person longer than love lasts?

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1663633
#90. It had been a false spring, a lie like all the other lies, and I found myself wondering it it would ever really come.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1665777
#91. Lower your voice," he warned, but I'd had enough. As he reached for my arm again, I wrenched myself free and nearly flattened Boy Long in the process. I hadn't even seen him. Glancing between Jock and me quickly, gauging the situation, Boy said, "Is everything all right

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1683344
#92. Whatever they were, they were living their lives, out there doing it, making their mistakes. Somehow I'd gotten stuck along the way [ ... ] and I didn't know how to free myself exactly.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1709712
#93. I'd like it if you could love me for a little while at least.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1718888
#94. You have to digest life. You have to chew it up and love it all through.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1719491
#95. 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.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1734694
#96. The very rich only admire themselves

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1749049
#97. What's wrong with all of us, Bill? Can you tell me that?'
'Hell if I know', he said. 'We drink too much for starters. And we want too much, don't we?

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1752456
#98. Most things in the world are not unexpected if one thinks carefully about them. Even something one would call unusual- if one things about it, it's really just a thing that was supposed to happen. Encountering unusual events often means you didn't think things through.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1756712
#99. Who knows what anyone deserves? We like to play judge and jury, but we're all a rotten mess under our skins.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1757553
#100. The accordion and the whores and the retching,' he said. 'That's our music.

Paula McLain

Paula McLain Quotes #1804627

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