Quotes from Jenny Colgan

Everyone, if they are lucky, loses parents that they love, in the end.

She had handed him her heart in her hands without truly knowing whether this quiet, enclosed man could be trusted with it. But it had gone; it had flown from her as if it had always been his, regardless of what he wanted to do with it.

Helping to match people to the book that would change their life, or make them fall in love, or get over a love affair gone wrong. And for the children, she could show them where to dive into a crocodile-infested river, or fly through the stars, or open the door of a wardrobe...

How lovely to work at something you loved and knew you were great at, even if it was for a pittance and you occasionally got punched.

Now she knew that there were people -people everywhere- who cared about and loved books as much as she did.

There was a universe inside every human being every bit as big as the universe outside them.

Because life is like that, isn't it? If you thought of all the tiny things that divert your path one way or another, some good, some bad, you'd never do anything ever again.

I know," said Polly, and as gently as she was able said, "Have you thought about maybe another line of work?" "What, like making cakes?" Chris scoffed. "No, you see it's kind of different for me. I'm a professional." Polly decided it was best they leave before she hit him with the teapot.

Polly soaked for a long time, reading her book, until she was warm again from the inside out, then put on her oldest, softest cotton pajamas and woollen socks, and propped herself up at the window to look out at the storm.

Yes! Do you never listen?" "I never listen." "Okay, well, it's a good thing I don't talk much then, isn't it?

Nina had been told regularly since she was a child that she needed more fresh air, at which she would take her book and clamber up the apple tree at the bottom of their tatty garden, away from the car her father was always tinkering with but had never driven in all the years of her childhood—she wondered what had happened to it—and hide there, braced against the trunk, her feet swinging, burying herself in Enid Blyton or Roald Dahl until she was allowed back inside again.

Apparently there is a python magazine that is about computers, and a python magazine that's about really big snakes and if you get one you don't really want the other.

Some'll rob you blind, some'll kick you when you're down, but you spread some good feeling and some warmth about, and people like that. Aye.

He had to take his life as he had had to take it for the last five years: to have no expectations as to what each day would bring. In fact, to expect nothing. To grab joy if he could. To hold fast. To try never to be surprised.

Everything seemed to happen so slowly. Nina watched the spiral of dust tremble its way from the ceiling, wavering in the light, a tiny cloud of white, nothing more. But it was, she knew, enough. She looked at Surinder

Because the thing was, she guessed, you always thought you had time—time to fix the relationships that had broken down; to do all the things you thought you'd get around to; to finish everything, tie it up with a neat bow and that was it. But life wasn't like that at all.

Multiply all ingredients by four to get too many cupcakes.

Endlessly welcoming and hospitable, particularly up here. It didn't necessarily mean she belonged, did it?

However, these days everyone holds their stupid smartphone in front of them the entire time in case somebody likes a dog picture on Facebook and they miss it by two seconds...

that seasons would come and go with the clouds passing across the sky, but also that everything would come around again and find itself much as it had been generations ago, in the farms and the rivers and the towering cliffs and the gentle running valleys, where life did not move so fast that there wasn't time to settle down with a cup of tea and a piece of shortbread and a book.

still believe reading is the best form of direct brain-to-brain communication humans have yet figured out

Muffins are just an American way of saying, 'I eat cake for breakfast.

She stared into the distance and tried to think, honestly and properly, about her life: up here where it was clearer, and she could breathe, and she wasn't surrounded by a million people in a great hurry dashing or grabbing or shouting or achieving things in their lives that they plastered all over Facebook and Instagram, making you feel inadequate.

Some people buried their fears in food, she knew, and some in booze, and some in planning elaborate engagements and weddings and other life events that took up every spare moment of their time in case unpleasant thoughts intruded. But for Nina, whenever reality, or the grimmer side of reality, threatened to invade, she always turned to a book.