Quotes from Paula McLain

It was the end of Ernest's struggle with apprenticeship, and an end to other things as well. He would never again be unknown. We would never again be this unhappy.

Isn't love a beautiful goddamn liar?

But what does it all add up to? What is all the suffering for if not so we can see how alike we are, and not alone? Where will the mercy come from, if not from us?

Getting your heart broken is the privilege of being human.

went off full of fire and conviction and derring-do.

I'd had my share of rain. My mother's illness ... had weighed on me, but the years before had been heavy, too. I was only twenty eight.

The accordion and the whores and the retching,' he said. 'That's our music.

You're making something new. Don't forget that when it starts to hurt.

Don't be difficult, Denys," Nell chided. "All women like a little flattery from time to time." "What if they didn't? What if they simply liked themselves and no one needed to bend backwards to flatter them? Wouldn't it all be simpler then?

What am I meant for then?" "How wonderful that question is, Beru." He smiled mysteriously. "And as you did not die on this day, you have more time in which to answer it.

That's the problem with going into the world, isn't it? You actually have to face things you find you don't want to know.

Love is a beautiful liar? Beauty was a liar too.

We were here together now, I told myself. Everything was lovely and fine. I should just know it and hold on to it and be happy. I would. I would try.

He read aloud to me as I curled next to him, both of our bodies in a warm arc of light. For nearly ten years I'd wanted this…this exactly. Is he really here? I thought. Am I? Denys read on, his voice rising and falling, while a leopard moth that had got caught in the curtains stopped struggling for a moment, and realized it was free.

Even when other things come in loud, we have to keep choosing each other. That's marriage. You can't only say the words once and think they'll stick. You have to say them over and over, and then live them out with all you've got.

He wanted everything there was to have, and more than that.

I also liked to look around at the houses surrounding the park and wonder about the people who filled them, what kinds of marriages they had and how they loved or hurt each other on any given day, and if they were happy, and whether they thought happiness was a sustainable thing.

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.

He didn't know how love managed to be a garden one moment and war the next.

only the vanished truly leave their mark. And

The things of the world knew so much more than we did and lived them more truly. The thorn trees had no grief or fear. The constellations didn't fight or hold themselves back, nor did the translucent hook of the moon. Everything was momentary and endless.

I met the devil,' Ernest said, finishing his glass of wine, 'and he doesn't give a damn about art.

That's obviously, isn't it?' she said. 'A hawk is always a hawk, except'- and here she raised on heavy eyebrow and gave a mysterious smile - 'except when the hawk is a cabbage.' 'What?' Ernest said, grinning and game and clearly perplexed. 'Exactly,' Gertrude said.

took a deep breath, tasting dust and eucalyptus, and moved past the smeary lights of the veranda. In the small park across the road, smooth clay had been spread like a dusting of confectioners' sugar,