Quotes from Paula McLain

Cameron says he's always been this way. But now it's worse. His girlfriend is pregnant and she's going to have the baby. Did her parents tell you that? Maybe I shouldn't even talk about it. I don't know.

plummeting like a grouse full of bird shot.

What will you do now?" "Live until it gives me away, of course. And drink only the best champagne. There's not time for anything else." His face was delicate and sensitive-looking, like a well-bred cat's. He also had rich brown eyes that seemed to want to laugh at the idea of sadness or self-pity.

I'm throwing myself a birthday party next week," he said. "One of the many ways I'm whistling past the graveyard these days. I'll bet you're a grand whistler, aren't you? Please come." —

What had I done or not done? Was it that I'd laughed at him—at us? As I lay there feeling stunned and confused, Jock began to snore lightly. How could he sleep at such a moment? It was our wedding night, and I was alone. I

Yes. Big as the moon over Gotham City. And every psychopath, sociopath, sadist, alcoholic, narcissist piece of shit anywhere can see it and comes running. And when the two find each other, they click. They recognize each other on some deep level. It's like they speak two variations of the same language.

The next morning at Nairobi Station we climbed aboard the train that would take us to Mombasa, and then onto the ship that would ferry us to India for our honeymoon. I was Beryl Purves—and still a virgin.

Berkeley had settled on the lower slopes of Mount Kenya in Naro Moru. He'd built a broad stone bungalow right up against the curves of the mountain,

We stayed with Jock's aunt and uncle, in their compound below the posh Malabar Hill. Jock's parents and two of his three brothers were there, having come to see if I was up to snuff. I wanted to have a long look at them all, too—the new family I'd won, as if in a lottery. On

Your river is gorgeous." I leaned through a cloud of clean-smelling hair tonic to kiss his cheek. "It was gleaming with fish when we crossed it." "Glad you're keen on the trout.

How are you?" she asks. The world's most innocuous question, impossible to answer.

She's so beautiful," I tell Emily. "She might have had a shot." "The world is full of beautiful girls.

The stickiest sorts of violence are often incredibly intimate, Will. They require trust. They take time.

Now come get some champagne before Denys swills it all." Denys. Though I'd only met him briefly on the street in Nairobi, for some reason my heart jumped at the sound of his name.

We had both tried for the sun, and had fallen, lurching to earth again, tasting melted wax and sorrow. Denys wasn't hers, or mine.

He's never been a throwaway kid. Never experienced the world in a woman's body, or a girl's. Never had a reason to confuse love with suffering.

I have fought for independence here, and freedom too. More and more I find they're not at all the same thing.

But we've never really understood why she stays with Troy, honestly. He's incapable of being faithful, even when they were first dating. A man like that doesn't change, and Emily should have so much more, should have her pick of anyone. It's never made any sense.

Maybe I've been unfair with her from the beginning, seeing her in a mirror and hating myself. She's been struggling to do the right thing, even when her own hurt has made that harder than it should ever

He would eat me here or drag me off to a glade or valley only he knew of, a place from which I'd never return. The last thought I remember having was This is how it feels, then. This is what it means to be eaten by a lion.

stood and looked at them—a band of ruddy, high-boned Scots in a silky brown Indian sea. Jock's mother was the pinkest of all, like a flamingo in bright silk. She

For better for for worse I was born a traveler, wanting to go everywhere and see everything.

The sensitive readers, they have a certain look. You can al. most smell it on them, that they need books to feel okay.

The faster you drink, the faster you can try to erase whatever needs erasing.