Quotes from Paula McLain

You need to learn to live with yourself, not others," he went on. "That's the difficult part. When you learn to accept your own nature, it will start to feel peaceful, not frantic. Maybe then you'll stop throwing yourself at such terrible choices.

They were both beautiful and interesting, full of deep water, as the Kips would say. And

Something was missing in my life—in me—and I thought writing could fill it or fix it, or cure me of myself.

baobab. Away in the distance I could see the cloud-softened

When she left him, she swore she would "never try it again," meaning marriage. But I don't think she knew how to be fully herself when she was with a man or could feel anything but baffled by the competing demands of career and domesticity. Her struggles are poignant and real to me, and all too familiar

Remember no one made you do anything. It's never anyone but you who does anything, and for that reason alone you shouldn't be sorry.

Chasing your past is a lousy, rotten game, isn't it?

Listen, I wanted to say, when you fell in love with me you must also have been in love with my wings. Love them now. Love me. Love me, and let me go.

I would show her I wasn't a bit of cobweb in the corner, something to be wiped or straightened, but a rival worth her notice. I would learn her ways and habits, and track her closely until I knew what she was and how to best her, and what precisely it would take to steal my good life back.

The pilgrims and the lost often did look the same, as Denys had once told me, and it was possible everyone ended up in the same place no matter which path we took or how often we fell to our knees, undoubtedly wiser for all of it. Barely

A new thing is good, though it be a sore place.

There wasn't anything simple about them, and I preferred that, and trusted it. My life wasn't simple either.

Long ago Corolla told me that it's not what happens to us that matters most, but how we can learn to carry it.

We're all of us afraid of many things, but if you make yourself smaller or let your fear confine you, then you really aren't your own person at all—are you?

Sometimes I wish we could rub out all of our mistakes and start fresh, from the beginning," I said. "And sometimes I think there isn't anything to us but our mistakes.

I couldn't understand why Frank would want to spend time with this crowd. They were bored, naughty children with highballs and morphine and sex for their toys. People were toys, too.

All I wanted was to be alone on a sea of unconsciousness, slipping away as the bed became a raft and my mind let go of itself.

And after a time, I stopped struggling even internally against the prescribed quietness.

He was afraid of marriage and he was afraid of being alone, too.

If I were any kind of water," Eden said, staring out and out, "I'd want to be this ocean." You already are, I wanted to tell her. You're everything I can see.

We were involved for nearly five years. Occasionally I would catch a glimpse of what I was doing and bolt away from him, my knapsack stuffed with the tattered draft of my first novel, meaning to finally get serious. But he quickly raced after me, again and again, and the same old chaos resumed.

Why we couldn't stop drinking or talking or kissing the wrong people no matter what it ruined.

I couldn't keep it out and stopped trying. I couldn't keep anything out, I realized, and that was something I loved about Africa. The way it got at you from the outside in and never let up, and never let you go.

Getting your heart broken is the privilege of being human, Eden used to say. I didn't know what