Quotes from Susan Branch

Goodbye Darcy, goodbye Jean, goodbye stone cottage, scratchy towels, fields of wildflowers; good bye gorgeous Peak District ... OK English People, for your own good, get off the roads, here we come!

Remember, childhood only lasts 10-12 years. There's a lot that has to be squeezed in to make for a lifetime of happy memories. ?

The tension between what is, and what we dream of, is important. Not to discount what we have, but to hold onto that middle ground, because it's in there that the magic happens.

And beyond the timeless meadows and emerald pastures, the rabbit holes and moss-covered oak and rowan trees and the slippy sloppy houses of frogs, the woodland-scented wind rushed between the leaves and blew around the gray veil that dipped below the fells, swirling up in a mist, blurring the edges of the distant forest. (View from Windermere in the Lake District)

Goodbye Darcy, goodbye Jean, goodbye stone cottage, scratchy towels, fields of wildflowers; good bye gorgeous Peak District ... OK English People, for your own good, get off the roads, here we come!

Before Julia Child there was only onion dip.

because commonsensically speaking, a room full of good books had to better for your health than a room with no books in it at all.

The path has a cottage garden on both sides; clumps of old-fashioned flowers ran all over each other: lamb's ear, mint, & rhubarb, roses, forget-me-nots, bleeding hearts & wisteria. I walked very slowly, savoring. At the end of the slate path was the house, very recognizable now... As nearly perfect a little place as I ever lived in is how Beatrix described it.

Spring is magic~ sweet to the senes & easy to celebrate.

My dad could go to work, he could get raises, he could be thanked for his contributions, he got a pay-check for his labor, but that didn't happen for moms. The best they could hope for would be a crayon valentine or a squashed, limp dandelion flower offered up from the damp hand of their wide-eyed and innocent child. Which wasn't nothing. In all my days I'd never considered anything to be more important than home. In a chaotic world, it was sanctuary; it was where love grew.

England reminds me of a quote I saw on a packet of Swiss Miss instant cocoa mix: 'Like a basket of drinkable kittens, wrapped in a blanket, next to a fireplace.

Once upon a time .... I want to have a little house with sunlight on the floor, A chimney with a rosy hearth and lilacs by the door. (Nancy Bird Turner)

I takes a pretty special man to take the place of no man at all.

What's the difference between ignorance & arrogance? I don't know & I don't care.

The only feeling stronger than loss is love.

Feed your soul with silence. That's where dreams are born.

During a snowstorm we built a fire, and made my grandma's stuffing and my mom's layered Jell-O, and mashed potatoes with lumps and my mom's delicious gravy and every other family thing we loved. We filled the house with the fragrance of sage, pumpkin, apples and cinnamon.

It wasn't a matter of jumping on the bandwagon; it was a matter of being run over by it.

So!, I thought, for the first time, there's more than one path to happiness! I likes that. I thought they were brave. I didn't want to be them, but I liked that they wanted to be them. It opened a world of possibilities in my mind, just the idea that every thing was much bigger than I thought.

Do not call anyone mate unless you have served on a boat with them.

Despite my broken heart, or rather, because of it, I was grateful to be where no one knew me. I was totally invisible here. I didn't have to pretend to be happy or nice or that everything was okay.

Together, Vita (Sackville-West) & Harold (Sir Harold Nicholson) had a passion bigger than them-selves, bigger than their marriage, bigger than everything~their garden. No matter what they did during their lives, the legacy they left for generations to come is pure magic.

but it finally occurred to me that the time was going to pass anyway, I might as well try to have something to show for it

Time is such a funny thing; one minute it's forever & the next, it's gone.