Quotes from Mary Balogh

They had not felt the absence of larger celebrations. They had wanted only each other. Their world had been complete.

Family, all those people who had some connection with one another, however slight, was of such huge importance to one's well-being. It gave one identity and a sense of belonging. It was the answer to loneliness and any sense of disconnection with the world one inevitably felt at times.

It is applied exclusively to girls. Have you noticed? I know a few wild boys, and people generally think none the worse of them—boys will be boys. I have never heard any of them called hoydens.

His manner with everyone but her was still rather stiff and remote.

Some kind angel must have granted me these few encounters with you in the past weeks, he said. I will live on the memories.

It seems almost as if you want me to reject you. As if you wish to be saved from yourself.

She loved him, Christina thought quite consciously. She was in love .

Time was going altogether too fast. Too wonderfully and too fast.

Perhaps it was the knowledge that she was beyond him that had made his love of her such a lasting, painful thing.

Oh, how helpless women were. All they could do was nurture those people within the small confines of their world. But who knew? Perhaps nurturing was ultimately as important as anything else. Look where the wars waged by men had got the world. Into ever more wars and conflicts—that was where.

park came into view—the double arched stone bridge over the fast-flowing river;

I want to marry again . . . Eventually. To someone I can love with my whole being. To someone who will make the universe explode around me.

He had never even put words to these deepest feelings in his own mind . . . He had never told anyone else. Or even himself. Yet he had told Diana Ingram.

Elizabeth slept for the rest of the night, somewhat comforted by her decision to do something.

I really could have thrown something at him, Rebecca, and I would too, but the only thing to hand was that Wedgwood vase that Maude sets such store by. And I really did not think he was worth a Wedgwood vase and Maude's tears.

If all you need is a little temptation, then I am here at your service to provide it, ma'am.

I still miss him. There is a loneliness and an emptiness where he was.

She resented his knowing or his discovering. She felt intruded upon. Almost violated.

She felt horribly out of control of the conversation.

She must not let him ruin the tranquility of her life again. She would not let him do so!

I wish it be understood that she will always be first in my life, before any other member of my family or hers and before all my other duties. I will not tolerate criticism of that fact even from you. I will hear none from you ever again.

There is no such thing as the love you are looking for. It is only in your dreams. If that is so . . . then I think I would prefer my dreams to your reality, Jack.

Tonight she would not believe in tragedies or impossibilities.

She was engulfed by mingled panic and indecision, and by a terrible depression. She would never see him again. He would come riding out of the stable in a moment and disappear down the driveway, and she would never see him again. Ever.