Quotes from Shana Abé

The shelf number for the book would be inked in beside it, but each shelf contained about fifty books, so you had to hang there on the ladder and read every spine of every one until you came across yours. Let it be said that nothing was ever accomplished in haste at Iverson.

I remember thinking that the Germans must have had a very fine view of all the neighborhoods they were obliterating.

You can get the measure of a man by observing the way he treats his animals

rape or seduction, he'd take either

It's funny how your life can come apart in an instant. How you can feel safe and satisfied one moment, and the next you're dangling over an abyss, no warning, no quarter. You're absolutely about to fall.

I lay in my bed and tried not to miss him, to miss the entire experience of him. I wanted to feel the shape of him beside me. I wanted him to touch my hair. To kiss me, long and velvety slow.

Marriage is work, enormous work, because it's a living entity that needs everlasting attention. It will push you and bend you and test you, and if you're not prepared for any of that, it will shatter you.

Im going to kiss you, Eleanore he said quietly, still looking at her. Not now. Later. His eyes cut back to mine. I thought it fair to tell you first. I stilled. If you think you can do so without me biting your lip, feel free to try. His gaze shone wicked blue. I dont mind if you bite. Biting your lip off, I should have said. Ah,Lets see how it goes, shall we?

I would not have the world be cruel to you," she emphasized. "I would not have Vincent Astor be cruel to you. But if—when—those things happen, I would not have you be cruel in return. Kinder hearts are stronger, I think.

Being in love makes all that work easier, but it does not make it go away. There will be necessary sacrifices. There will be pain.

The nature of hope is curious to me. It can sustain us through the darkest of times. It can buoy us above every reasonable expectation of despair. Yet hope can shatter us just as readily as the darkness can. People refer to it as false hope, but I think that's misleading, because the feeling itself is painfully true. It is a treacherous hope, more precisely. A dangerous one.

There are certain people in this world who have the ability to make you feel as if you're the only person in the universe who matters to them.

You deserve someone who loves you without conditions. Who would never look at another woman for the rest of his life with anything but indifference, because you are the sum of his dreams. The one girl whose eyes shine with all the days and nights he prays will come. His stars and his sun and his moon. His happiness, his true heart. His voice roughened. His everything. She gazed up at him, her lips trembling. Is that it? Is that how you feel about her? Yes, he said, and dropped his hands.

It can be difficult sometimes for our families to accept us as people separate from who they are. As separate souls. When we're young, we're taught

to behave as our parents do—to cherish what they cherish and believe what they believe. And for a while, that's as it should be. But as adults, sometimes we have our own desires, our own hopes, that are at odds with how our parents view the world.

I would not attempt to guess at the nature of true love, except to say that when I was immersed in it—swimming through it, breathing it in, holding that breath, exhaling—in those short, extraordinary days and nights I shared with your father, true love was absolutely clear to me. Jack was clear to me. Jack was me, and I was him, and you, sweet child, are now us both.

Zane gestured to the table. Did you see what I brun-brought? She shook her head, turning back to the papers. I've read these. Not that one. Nipped it from The Spotted Dog. Last week's news, but I thought you'd like the bottom-right bit. At least your reading is coming along. An' I washed my face last Sunday, he said virtuously. -Zane & Rue

Even as a child, she'd never spent hours daydreaming about her wedding; it all seemed rather silly to her. Surely the most important part of it all wasn't that day. It was every day after.

because he saw me adrift in an open boat on the ocean. He said I was going to lose everything but my life, and that I would be saved but that others would be lost.

There are certain people in this world who have the ability to make you feel as if you're the only person in the universe who matters to them. Whether it's moment by moment or enough years to count up to a lifetime, they look you in the eyes and smile at you, direct and sincere—and you're smitten.

today the earth spins on and still carries you with it. Today you will survive.

I want you in the sky, and against the earth. I want to kiss you again, I want to touch you, I want to feel you in my arms and I want to hear you gasping my name when I'm inside you. I want all that, and I want it badly. Every time I look at you, I want it. -Kit to Rue

The seam of the stocking along the end of her right

Carnations, peach and lemon and cherry. Too many people (Europeans, really) consider carnations to be nothing but a vulgar American indulgence, but in my opinion, there is no blossom more intricate, more deliciously, thickly, fragrantly lavish, than a carnation.