Quotes from Paula McLain

I didn't quite know what to say. Kitty was one of the most poised and self-confident women I'd ever known, and here she was knocked off her feet and set spinning.

If the raging waters had reached out to swallow me, I would have let them. I wanted to die that day—I did—and there'd been other times, too. Not many, but they were there, and as I watched Ernest twitch in an uneasy sleep, I couldn't help wondering if we all had them. And if so, if we survived them, was it by chance alone? Hours

Strolling, I felt the dark tug at me, and a pleasant itch to be out of my dress, out of my skin even.

I rarely knew what Jock was thinking. He worked hard, as

He was like a boy when he slept well. I could see the child he used to be under the man, and I loved them both, simply and completely and irreversibly. I tucked myself beneath his arm, and felt his breath moving in and out, and let myself sleep.

You've been gone all day without checking in, making decisions that concern this case without prior authorization, and now you come back with nothing but a script for a made-for-TV movie.

His eyes cut sideways at me in the mirror, and my pulse quickened. It was something to have his attention, even briefly. Like a bright light passing my way before moving on.

Oh," I said, feeling punched in the windpipe.

Can anyone tell you when you're grown up?" Another

I've let you run too wild and you know it," my father said when I went to him, asking to be left alone.

It was possible that all men were difficult to read, but I had to live with Jock through every long

be a good person to know," I said. "Watch

Have you ever seen stars like this? You can't have. They don't make them like this anywhere in the world." Above our heads, the sky was a brimming treasure box. Some of the stars seemed to want to pull free and leap down onto my shoulders—and though these were the only ones I had ever known,

This wasn't the France I knew, which had always been as much about swimming in the sea as about anything else, about languorous holiday sunshine and whole days spent drinking wine and staring up at the clouds. No, this country seemed to be offering something dark and strange and new to me, in an entirely different language. If only I could learn to understand it.

Out in the yard, the glow from several hurricane lamps rinsed out through the cracks in the stable door. High overhead, ribbons of stars swirled like milk, and a sickle moon lay hard and bright on its side. The night insects seethed away in the forest and

I'm hoping it gets easier at some point," I told him. "I still feel awful about the things we said. The things we didn't say. Do you think it's possible to make peace with the past?" "Hell. You can try, I guess. But I'm not sure anyone gets forgiven. Not even then.

my doubt is loud,

He also has more courage than a man, and more determination. He'll fight for what belongs to him, no matter the size or strength of his rival. If the rival has a drop of cowardice in him, he's dead already." I

Kiss her until she be wearied out,' " Denys repeated. "That's the best bit, isn't it, and Berkeley does it so well.

What if two equal lions battle for territory, or for a mate?" "They'll each size up the other, testing the odds. A lion is more cautious on equal footing, but even then he won't back down. He has no fear, you see, not as we understand it. He can only be exactly what he is, what his nature dictates, and nothing else.

don't know what it is about Africa, but champagne is absolutely compulsory here." Without

Until a few months ago, it had been my general understanding that if you were a writer, you pummeled your own soul until some words trickled out of the dry streambed, enough to fill a saucer or a teaspoon or an eyedropper. And then you wept a little, or gnashed your teeth, and somehow found the fortitude to get up the next day and do it again.

Though I often looked for one, I finally had to admit that there could be no cure for Paris

know that what you've done is twist something natural into something else. And you can never trust an unnatural thing.