β
I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.
β
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try again tomorrow.
β
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Mary Anne Radmacher
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Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.
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Mary Anne Radmacher
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Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
Live with intention.
Walk to the edge.
Listen Hard.
Practice wellness.
Play with abandon.
Laugh.
Choose with no regret.
Appreciate your friends.
Continue to learn.
Do what you love.
Live as if this is all there is.
β
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Mary Anne Radmacher
β
Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.
β
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Mary Anne Radmacher
β
As we work to create light for others, we naturally light our own way.
β
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Mary Anne Radmacher
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Think of it! We could have gone on longing for one another and pretending not to notice forever. This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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I have gone to [this bookshop] for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadnβt known I wanted.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
speak quietly to yourself & promise there will be better days. whisper gently to yourself and provide assurance that you really are extending your best effort. console your bruised and tender spirit with reminders of many other successes. offer comfort in practical and tangible ways - as if you were encouraging your dearest friend. recognize that on certain days the greatest grace is that the day is over and you get to close your eyes. tomorrow comes more brightly...
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Mary Anne Radmacher
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I think you learn more if you're laughing at the same time.
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Mary Ann Shaffer
β
Courage doesn't always roar, sometimes it's the quiet voice at the end of the day whispering 'I will try again tomorrow
β
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Mary Anne Radmacher
β
All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged -- after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person's name suddenly pops up everywhere you go? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Mr. Simpless, my parson friend, calls it Grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and "fruitfulness" is drawn in.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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Isola doesn't approve of small talk and believes in breaking the ice by stomping on it.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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All I really want to do today is go to the book store, drink coffee and read.
β
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Ann Marie Frohoff
β
stand often in the company of dreamers: they tickle your common sense & believe you can achieve things which are impossible.
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Mary Anne Radmacher
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I sometimes think I prefer suitors in books rather than right in front of me. How awful, backward, cowardly, and mentally warped that will be if it turns out to be true.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers-- booksellers really are a special breed. No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no one in his right mind would want to own one-- the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it-- along with first dibs on the new books.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
If all we've got to look forward to is disloyalty and treachery, why do we even make friends?"
"Again, human nature. Hoping for the best is what drives us.
β
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Gena Showalter (Intertwined (Intertwined, #1))
β
She is one of those ladies who is more beautiful at sixty than she could possibly have been at twenty. (how I hope someone says that about me someday)!
β
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Mary Ann Shaffer
β
I am to cover the philosophical side of the debate and so far my only thought is that reading keeps you from going gaga.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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Then I imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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If you choose to be sad then you will be sad but there times you don't know why you're sad. Tears start flowing from your eyes.
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Ann Marie Aguilar
β
There is no small act of kindness.
Every compassionate act makes large the world.
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Mary Anne Radmacher
β
βLive with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen Hard. Practice wellness. PLay with abondon. Laugh. Choose with no regrets. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is
β
β
Mary Anne Radmacher
β
No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Hereβs a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages
1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didnβt stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5.
3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on βBright Eyes.β
4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank.
5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13.
6) Nadia ComΔneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14.
7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15.
8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil.
9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19.
10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961.
11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936.
12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23
13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24
14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record
15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity
16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France
17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures βDavidβ and βPietaβ by age 28
18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world
19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter
20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean
21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind
22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest
23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech βI Have a Dream."
24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics
25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight
26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions.
27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon.
28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas
30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driverβs order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger
31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States
32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out.
33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games"
34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out.
35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa.
36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president.
37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels.
38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat".
40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived
41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise
42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out
43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US
44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats
45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President
β
β
Pablo
β
My worries travel around in my head on their well worn path
β
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
Begin each day as if it were on purpose.
β
β
Mary Anne Radmacher
β
in the cold you wrap me. in my uncertainty you listen. in all my joys you celebrate. at every turn you meet me with competence and grace. what a fine dance we have together.
β
β
Mary Anne Radmacher
β
I never thought it would end like this. I never thought he would leave me without saying goodbye.
β
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Philippa Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #9))
β
When we pity ourselves all we see is ourselves. When we have problems, all we see are our problems and that's all what we love of talking about. We don't see the good things in our lives.
β
β
Ann Marie Aguilar
β
Because there is nothing I would rather do than rummage through bookshops, I went at once to Hastings & Sons Bookshop upon receiving your letter. I have gone to them for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadn't known I wanted.
β
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet
voice at the end of the day saying, "I will try again tomorrow.
β
β
Mary Anne Radmacher
β
Naturally curly hair is a curse, and don't ever let anyone tell you different.
β
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
living eulogy.
she danced.
she sang. she took.
she gave.
she loved.
she created.
she dissented. she enlivened.
she saw. she grew. she sweated.
she changed.
she learned. she laughed.
she shed her skin.
she bled on the pages of her days,
she walked through walls,
she lived with intention.
β
β
Mary Anne Radmacher
β
Lean forward into your life...catch the best bits and the finest wind. Just tip your feathers in flight a wee bit and see how dramatically that small lean can change your life.
β
β
Mary Anne Radmacher (Lean Forward Into Your Life: Begin Each Day as If It Were on Purpose)
β
Your questions regarding that gentleman are very delicate, very subtle, very much like being smacked in the head with a mallet...it's a tuba among the flutes.
β
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
it is (often) the quiet gesture which carries the most significance - the one which suddenly directs the symphony.
β
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Mary Anne Radmacher
β
Do you arrange your books alphabetically? (I hope not.)
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
Memory plays tricks. Memory is another word for story, and nothing is more unreliable.
β
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Ann-Marie MacDonald (Fall On Your Knees)
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Will Thisbee gave me The Beginner's Cook-Book for Girl Guides. It was just the thing; the writer assumes you know nothing about cookery and writes useful hints - "When adding eggs, break the shells first.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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Treat a dog right and he'll treat you right. ... Cats is different, but I never held it against them.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
I was born to be your rival,' she [Anne] said simply. 'And you mine. We're sisters, aren't we?
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Philippa Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #9))
β
Moses: God or crowd control?!?
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
Humour is the best way to make the unbearable bearable.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
We read books, talked books, argued over books and became dearer and dearer to one another.
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Mary Ann Shaffer
β
what if
we just
acted like
everything
was easy?
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Mary Anne Radmacher
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Creativity is the catalyst to the future.
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Ann Marie Frohoff
β
There are some stories you can't hear enough. They are the same every time you hear them. But you are not. That's one reliable way of understanding time.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald (The Way the Crow Flies)
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I canβt think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I canβt talk to, or worse, someone I canβt be silent with.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
It was amazing to me then, and still is, that so many people who wander into bookshops don't really know what they're after--they only want to look around and hope to see a book that will strike their fancy. And then, being bright enough not to trust the publisher's blurb, they will ask the book clerk the three questions: (1) What is it about? (2) Have you read it? (3) Was it any good?
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
at the start of our together you were the prelude to a vast orchestration. at the end of it all you will have been the most profound and enduring music of my life.
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Mary Anne Radmacher
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The first rule of snooping is to come at it sideways.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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Reading keeps you from going ga-ga.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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His writings have made me his friend.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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Don't make any promises that you can't keep
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Ann Marie Aguilar
β
The Jewish sages also tell us that God dances when His children defeat Him in argument, when they stand on their feet and use their minds. So questions like Anne's are worth asking. To ask them is a very fine kind of human behavior. If we keep demanding that God yield up His answers, perhaps some day we will understand them. And then we will be something more than clever apes, and we shall dance with God.
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Mary Doria Russell (The Sparrow (The Sparrow, #1))
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I much prefer whining to counting my blessings.
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Mary Ann Shaffer
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Lean forward into your life. Begin each day as if it were on purpose.
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Mary Anne Radmacher
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You can't make a fan of everyone. Stay true to your story, characters, music, art or whatever it is you do and fuck everyone else who doesn't like it. Life isn't perfect.
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Ann Marie Frohoff
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Hope is a gift. You can't choose to have it. To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald (Fall on Your Knees)
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After all, what's good enough for Austen ought to be good enough for anyone.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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They are so young, they forget that the world is not as in love with them as they are.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald (Fall on Your Knees)
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I never met a man half so true as a dog. Treat a dog right, and he'll treat you right. He'll keep you company, be your friend, and never ask you no questions. Cats is different, but I never held that against 'em.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
Do you think there's such a thing as a ghost who masquerades as a person? Do you believe that there are people whose bodies are still alive here on earth but whose souls are already in hell?
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Ann-Marie MacDonald (Fall on Your Knees)
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Oh yes. Draw your hem back from my mud, little sister.
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Philippa Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #9))
β
Life is not just about the good things or not just about the bad things. It is both. It all depends where you focus your attention.
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Ann Marie Aguilar
β
Depression exist without you knowing it, even denying it. It is not an illusion. You don't even know you're in it. It takes awhile before you realize it. If you deny it, it means your still in there or else you won't talk about your misery and the dramas in your life.
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Ann Marie Aguilar
β
It is okay of talking about the past, as long as there's no bitterness and anger. It only gives you a heart attack. It won't change the past either.
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Ann Marie Aguilar
β
It was not a windy day, my hair always looks like that.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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βWhat a blight that woman is. Do you happen to know why? I lean toward a malignant fairy at her christening.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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It is better to know the truth than live in uncertainty.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
See that's where it falls apart for me!" Anne cried. "What sticks in my throat is that God gets the credit but never the blame. I just can't swallow that kind of theological candy. Either God's in charge or he's not...
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Mary Doria Russell (The Sparrow (The Sparrow, #1))
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It is okay of airing out your frustration, just don't dwell on them. Find out the cause and find a solution of getting rid of it. If you can't have the solution much as well accept it.
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Ann Marie Aguilar
β
Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done, to have advanced true friends?" It isn't. I hope, wherever she is, she has that in her mind.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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Friends, show me a man who hates himself, and I'll show you a man who hates his neighbors more! He'd have toβyou'd not grant anyone else something you can't have for yourselfβno love, no kindness, no respect!
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
Before this war is over,' [Walter] said - or something said through his lips - 'every man and woman and child in Canada will feel it - you, Mary, will feel it - feel it to your heart's core. You will weep tears of blood over it. The Piper has come - and he will pipe until every corner of the world has heard his awful and irresistible music. It will be years before the dance of death is over - years, Mary. And in those years millions of hearts will break.
β
β
L.M. Montgomery (Rilla of Ingleside (Anne of Green Gables, #8))
β
She's no lady. Her songs are all unbelievably unhappy or lewd. It's called Blues. She sings about sore feet, sexual relations, baked goods, killing your lover, being broke, men called Daddy, women who dress like men, working, praying for rain. Jail and trains. Whiskey and morphine. She tells stories between verses and everyone in the place shouts out how true it all is.
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Ann-Marie MacDonald (Fall on Your Knees)
β
Iβm not a woman you bring home to Mother, pick out china patterns with, or Mary forefend, breed. Iβve seen a chunk of the universe, true, but thereβs still so much more to see. I doubt Iβll ever cure this wanderlust, and Iβm content with dedicating my life to failing to sate it... Heβs never going to sit at my feet and write me poems, which is good because I hate poetry, except dirty ones that rhyme.
β
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Ann Aguirre (Grimspace (Sirantha Jax, #1))
β
Thinking to comfort me, they said, "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and the next year and forever. There is no end to that, but perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it.
β
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
Faced with the Divine, people took refuge in the banal, as though answering a cosmic multiple-choice question: If you saw a burning bush, would you (a) call 911, (b) get the hot dogs, or (c) recognize God? A vanishingly small number of people would recognize God, Anne had decided years before, and most of them had simply missed a dose of Thorazine.
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Mary Doria Russell (The Sparrow (The Sparrow, #1))
β
What on earth did you say to Isola? She stopped in on her way to pick up Pride and Prejudice and to berate me for never telling her about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Why hadn't she known there were better love stories around? Stories not riddled with ill-adjusted men, anguish, death and graveyards!
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
I believe I am becoming pathetic. I'll go further, I believe that I am in love with a flower-growing, wood-carving quarryman/carpenter/pig farmer. In fact, I know I am. Perhaps tomorrow I will become entirely miserable at the thought that he doesn't love me back - may, even, care for Remy- but at this precise moment I am succumbing to euphoria. My head and stomach feel quite odd.
β
β
Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
The secret weapon is cucumber.'
Solange sat all the way up. 'Jasmine, cover your ears.'
MaryAnn, Juliette and Jasmine burst out laughing.
'Sheesh, Solange. Get your mind out of the gutter.'
'MY mind is just fine, thank you. It's MaryAnn's I'm concerned about.'
'You put them on your eyes,' MaryAnn said, laughing even harder.
β
β
Christine Feehan (Dark Possession (Dark, #15))
β
I, too, have felt that the war goes on and on. When my son, Ian, died at El Alamein-- side by side with... visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said, "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and nexe year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it.
β
β
Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
He turned, throwing over hi shoulder, βAnd if he growls at you, even once, heβs out. He looks wild.β
I am, Riley snapped inside her head.
Do not laugh, she thought to herself.
Her dad paused at the door. βWhere does it stay while youβre at school?β
It. Nice. βOutside.β
βYou could be inviting flees into our home, Mary Ann.β
No. Laughing. βHeβs clean, Dad. I swear. But if I spot a single little bug, Iβll bathe him.β
That could prove interesting, Riley said.
β
β
Gena Showalter (Unraveled (Intertwined, #2))
β
As the Roman Empire came to its close, all the old gods of the pagan world were seen as demons by the Christians who rose. It was useless to tell them as the centuries passed that their Christ was but another God of the Wood, dying and rising, as Dionysus or Osiris had done before him, and that the Virgin Mary was in fact the Good Mother again enshrined. Theirs was a new age of belief and conviction, and in it we became devils, detached from what they believed, as old knowledge was forgotten or misunderstood.
β
β
Anne Rice (The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles, #2))
β
Everything in New York is a photograph. All the things that are supposed to be dirty or rough or unrefined are the most beautiful things. Garbage cans at the ends of alleyways look like they've been up all night talking with each other. Doorways with peeling paint look like the wise lines around an old feller's eyes. I stop and stare but can't stay because men always think I'm selling something. Or worse, giving something away. I wish I could be invisible. Or at least I wish I didn't look like someone they want to look at. They stop being part of the picture, they get up from their chess game and come out of the frame at me, blocking my view.
β
β
Ann-Marie MacDonald (Fall on Your Knees)
β
The witch's hair was too short and too dark for blond. She wasn't sure if that relieved her or disturbed her.
Riley had immediately begun his interrogation, and it had gone something like this:
Riley: Where is the meeting between your kind and Aden Stone supposed to take place?
Witch: Go suck yourself.
Riley: Maybe later. Meeting?
Witch: Enjoy death.
Riley: I have once already. Now, decide to talk or lose a body part.
Witch: May I recommend a finger?
Riley: Sure. After I take one of your very necessary hands.
β
β
Gena Showalter (Unraveled (Intertwined, #2))
β
She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants, and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has molded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands.
β
β
Walter Pater
β
Mother Mary of Anabolic Grace, we got Teras incoming?β He levels angry blue eyes on me. βYouβre a hex, lady, dark luck, powerful bad juju, ken?β
βOnly to people who try to kidnap me,β I tell him sweetly, and March snorts, so I feel obliged to add, βOr rescue meβ¦β And then Dina makes a pfft sound. βOr who travel with meβ¦β My gaze sweeps around the darkened interior, trying to find an ally, but nobody will hold my eyes more than two seconds, it seems. βFine, frag you all, Iβm dark juju, bad luck, and youβre all doomed.
β
β
Ann Aguirre (Grimspace (Sirantha Jax, #1))
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Night-time train travel is wonderful again! No standing in the corridors for hours, no being shunted off for a troop train to pass, and above all, no black-out curtains. All the windows we passed were lighted, and I could snoop once more. I missed it so terribly during the war. I felt as if we had all turned into moles scuttling along in our separate tunnels. I don't consider myself a real peeper-they go in for bedrooms, but it's families in sitting rooms or kitchens that thrill me. I can imagine their entire lives from a glimpse of bookshelves, or desks, or lit candles, or bright sofa cushions.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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we all make vows, Jimmy. And there is something very beautiful and touching and noble about wanting good impulses to be permanent and true forever," she said. "Most of us stand up and vow to love, honor and cherish someone. And we truly mean it, at the time. But two or twelve or twenty years down the road, the lawyers are negotiating the property settlement."
"You and George didn't go back on your promises."
She laughed. "Lemme tell ya something, sweetface. I have been married at least four times, to four different men." She watched him chew that over for a moment before continuing, "They've all been named George Edwards but, believe me, the man who is waiting for me down the hall is a whole lot different animal from the boy I married, back before there was dirt. Oh, there are continuities. He has always been fun and he has never been able to budget his time properly and - well, the rest is none of your business."
"But people change," he said quietly.
"Precisely. People change. Cultures change. Empires rise and fall. Shit. Geology changes! Every ten years or so, George and I have faced the fact that we have changed and we've had to decide if it makes sense to create a new marriage between these two new people." She flopped back against her chair. "Which is why vows are such a tricky business. Because nothing stays the same forever. Okay. Okay! I'm figuring something out now." She sat up straight, eyes focused somewhere outside the room, and Jimmy realized that even Anne didn't have all the answers and that was either the most comforting thing he'd learned in a long time or the most discouraging. "Maybe because so few of us would be able to give up something so fundamental for something so abstract, we protect ourselves from the nobility of a priest's vows by jeering at him when he can't live up to them, always and forever." She shivered and slumped suddenly, "But, Jimmy! What unnatural words. Always and forever! Those aren't human words, Jim. Not even stones are always and forever.
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Mary Doria Russell (The Sparrow (The Sparrow, #1))
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We were in the middle of a game of cards when I noticed a figure out of the corner of my eye. It was Maxon, standing at the open door, looking amused. As our eyes met, I could see that his expression was clearly asking what in the world I was doing. I stood, smiling, and walked over to him.
"Oh, sweet Lord," Anne muttered as she realized the prince was at the door. She immediately swept the cards into a sewing basket and stood, Mary and Lucy following suit.
"Ladies," Maxon said.
"Your Majesty," she said with a curtsy. "Such an honor, sir."
"For me as well," he answered with a smile.
The maids looked back and forth to one another, flattered. We were all silent for a moment, not quite sure what to do.
Mary suddenly piped up. "We were just leaving."
"Yes! That's right," Lucy added. "We were-uh-just..." She looked to Anne for help.
"Going to finish Lady America's dress for Friday," Anna concluded.
"That's right," Mary said. "Only two days left.
They slowly circled us to get out of the room, huge smiles plastered on their faces.
"Wouldn't want to keep you from your work," Maxon said, following them with his eyes, completely fascinated with their behavior.
Once in the hall, they gave awkwardly mistimed curtsies and walked away at a feverish pace. Immediately after they rounded the corner, Lucy's giggles echoed down the corridor, followed by Anne's intense hushing.
"Quite a group you have," Maxon said, walking into my room, surveying the space.
"They keep me on my toes," I answered with a smile.
"It's clear they have affection for you. That's hard to find." He stopped looking at my room and faced me. "This isn't what I imagined your room would look like."
I raised an arm and let it fall. "It's not really my room, is it? It belongs to you, and I just happen to be borrowing it.
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Kiera Cass (The Selection (The Selection, #1))