Quotes from Paula McLain

I wasn't raised to acknowledge my own feelings, let alone stick up for myself like that. That's movie dialogue, not real life.

I expected to find my father and Emma packed and on the verge of departure. That had been part of my plan—to spend the worst of the dismantlement in Bombay—but the farm hadn't even been sold yet. My father hadn't made a move.

I had a harder time with this dishonesty, because it seemed to speak of something larger. The way he was always out for himself, whatever the cost.

I wanted him back in a howling way. I needed to make things right, to forgive and be forgiven, which amounted to the same impossible thing.

It sounds like caveman stuff to me. If he keeps you in animal skins, tending the cook fire, no other man will see you, let alone want you.

Oh." I leaned back in his arms and felt my head go woozy. —

I can't see him through the smoke but recognize the solid, spreading warmth of his skin and his smell, which has always been exactly like this, the scent of trees becoming wise.

Her chin was propped up on one of her hands. A gin fizz foamed in the other. "He's lovely," she said.

Somehow, without finding or fixing any words to it, the next part of our story had begun.

Life is change, Anna. We don't get to keep each other.

as we sat under the wattle tree near the edge of the wide yard. Beyond the bluish ring of shade, the earth was like hammered metal and wicked as metal, too, or live cinders if you dared to walk on it.

I made a face at her and pulled at the neck of my dress. "Want a smoke?

The sun went down early in our valley—never a moment after 6:00 p.m.—and by the time it set, every night, no matter what else was happening, Jock had washed and was inside at our bar cart, doctoring a whisky.