Quotes from L.M. Montgomery

And when people mean to be good to you, you don't mind very much when they're not quite—always.

I don't like reading about martyrs because they always make me feel petty and ashamed... ashamed to admit I hate to get out of bed on frosty mornings and shrink from a visit to the dentist!

What is imagination for if not to enable you to peep at life through other people's eyes?

it would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry-tree all white with bloom in the moonshine, don't you think?

Emotion shook Rilla from head to foot. Joy—happiness—sorrow—fear—every passion that had wrung her heart in those four long years seemed to surge up in her soul for a moment as the deeps of being were stirred. She had tried to speak; at first voice would not come. Then—Yeth, said Rilla.

just one little seam after another and you never seem to be getting anywhere.

And did she talk to him after that as usual? asked Sara Ray. Oh, yes, she was just the same as she used to be, said the Story Girl wearily. But that doesn't belong to the story. It stops when she spoke at last. You're never satisfied to leave a story where it should stop, Sara Ray.

I'm afraid concerts spoil people for everyday life.

But you needn't try to make us believe you can chloroform a cat, laughed Anne. It was all the fault of the knothole, protested Phil. It was a good thing the knothole was there, said Aunt Jamesina rather severely. Kittens HAVE to be drowned, I admit, or the world would be overrun. But no decent, grown-up cat should be done to death—unless he sucks eggs.

Those who knew Anne best felt, without realizing that they felt it, that her greatest attraction was the aura of possibility surrounding her... the power of future development that was in her. She seemed to walk in an atmosphere of things about to happen. As

wounded prisoners. I wish I could hope, Miss Oliver—it would help, I suppose. But hope seems dead in me. I can't hope without some reason for it—and there is no reason. When Miss Oliver had gone to her own room and Rilla was lying on her bed in the moonlight, praying desperately for a little strength, Susan stepped in like a gaunt shadow and sat down beside her. Rilla, dear, do not you worry. Little Jem is not dead. Oh, how can you believe

looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them

April came tiptoeing in beautifully that year with sunshine and soft winds for a few days; and then a driving northeast snowstorm dropped a white blanket over the world

Was not -- should not -- a career be something splendid, wonderful, spectacular at the very least, something varied and exciting? Could my long, uphill struggle, through many quiet, uneventful years, be termed a career?

The Donald Fraser of The Story Girl was Donald Montgomery, and Neil Campbell was David Murray, of Bedeque. The only embroidery I permitted myself in the telling of the tale was to give Donald a horse and cutter. In reality, what he had was a half-broken steer, hitched to a rude, old wood-sled, and it was with this romantic equipage that he hied him over to Richmond Bay to propose to Nancy!

The world looks like something God had just imagined for His own pleasure, doesn't it? Those trees look as if I could blow them away with a breath — pouf! I'm so glad I live in a world where there are white frosts, aren't you?

I'll thank you to restore yourself to yourself.

It gives you a lovely, comfortable feeling to apologize and be forgiven, doesn't it?

Some folks think they are luxuries,' I said, 'but at Ingleside we think they are necessities.

I'm so glad my window looks east into the sunrising,' said Anne, going over to Diana. 'It's so splendid to see the morning coming up over those long hills and glowing through those sharp fir tops. It's new every morning, and I feel as if I washed my very soul in that bath of earliest sunshine.

The Haunted Wood was a harmless, pretty spruce grove in the field below the orchard. We considered that all our haunts were too commonplace, so we invented this for our own amusement.

Even eighty-odd is sometimes vulnerable to vanity.

Most people worry so much, they think you're not right if you don't worry.

There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting.