Quotes from Mary Balogh

She had never believed in fate. She still did not. It would be nonsense of freedom of will and choice, and it was through such freedom that we worked our way through life and learned what we needed to learn. But sometimes, it seemed to her, there was something, some sign, to nudge one along in a certain direction. What one chose to do with that nudge was up to that person.

Future indifferences is no consolation for present pain.

People, especially some religious people. would have us believe that it is wrong . even a sin, to love oneself. It is not. It is the basic, essential love. If you do not love yourself, you cannot possibly love anyone else. Not fully and truly.

You really love me? she asked wistfully. The devil! he exclaimed, looking over his shoulder. Did I forget to say it? The thing I came to say?

If you have always suspected your sister of an inclination to madness, it will be my pleasure to confirm your worst fears.

Sometimes children do not realize by how fragile a thread their security hangs. Perhaps it is as well they do not - most of them grow up before the thread can be broken.

but most roads I have learned from past experience lead somewhere eventually.

They were all true today but tomorrow they would be a little less so and next week less so again. It was in the nature of strong emotion that it faded away over time.

One does tend to assume that life must be far easier for others than it ever is for oneself," he said. "I suspect it rarely is. I daresay life was not meant to be easy.

I came, he said. Good Lord! If there were an orator-of-the-year award, he would be in dire danger of winning it.

The trouble with life sometimes is that we are all in it together.

He knew he was alive when he was with her, whatever the devil that meant. Whatever the devil it did mean, it made all the difference. And he was not even sure what that meant.

My woman. She had a momentary image of a caveman, hanging on to his woman by the hair with one hand while in the other he wielded a club to beat back caveman number two. Perhaps she would sketch it one day.

The ugliness at the heart of beauty. Is there always ugliness, do you suppose? Even when the object is very, very beautiful?

Did everyone make the most ghastly blunders at regularly intervals through their life and live to regret them ever afterward? Was everyone's life filled with confusing and contradictory mix of guilt and innocence, hatred and love, concern and unconcern, and any number of other pairings of polar opposites? Or were most people one thing or the other - good or bad, cheerful or crotchety, generous or miserly, and so on.

Was there to be some healing after all? Was healing possible when grave damage had been done? Was wholeness possible when one had been horribly maimed.

There is no such place as the promised land, but it would be foolish to reject even an unpromised land as worthless without first inspecting it thoroughly.

Idleness was so often despised. And yet it was on idleness, she knew, that one touched meaning and peace.

If we were to see the grandeur of our real selves, I suspect we would also see the necessity of living up to who we really are. And most of us are too lazy for that. Or else we are having too good a time enjoying our less than perfect lives to be bothered. (Claudia Martin)

Sometimes love was to be grasped in any form and in any manner it was offered. And sometimes love must be given in the same way.

But there were certain moments in life that forever defined one as a person - in one's own estimation, anyway. And one's own self esteem, when all was said and done, was of far more importance than the fickle esteem of one's peers.

Everyone should know what it is like to be called by name. By the name of the unique person one is at heart.

Sometimes she felt that her heart would ssurely break. But she knew that hearts did not literally break because their owners were unhappy - and foolish. How dreadfully foolish she had been. Yet she clung to the memories as to a lifeline.

People do understand the language of the heart, you know, even if the head does not always comprehend it.