Haunting Thoughts Quotes

Eleanor looked up, surprised; the little girl was sliding back in her chair, sullenly refusing her milk, while her father frowned and her brother giggled and her mother said calmly, 'She wants her cup of stars.' Indeed yes, Eleanor thought; indeed, so do I; a cup of stars, of course. 'Her little cup,' the mother was explaining, smiling apologetically at the waitress, who was thunderstruck at the thought that the mill's good country milk was not rich enough for the little girl. 'It has stars in the bottom, and she always drinks her milk from it at home. She calls it her cup of stars because she can see the stars while she drinks her milk.' The waitress nodded, unconvinced, and the mother told the little girl, 'You'll have your milk from your cup of stars tonight when we get home. But just for now, just to be a very good little girl, will you take a little milk from this glass?' Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.

She had taken to wondering lately, during these swift-counted years, what had been done with all those wasted summer days; how could she have spent them so wantonly? I am foolish, she told herself early every summer, I am very foolish; I am grown up now and know the values of things. Nothing is ever really wasted, she believed sensibly, even one's childhood, and then each year, one summer morning, the warm wind would come down the city street where she walked and she would be touched with the little cold thought: I have let more time go by.

Marriage isn’t a prison,” Karlee said. “It’s not supposed to hold two people captive.” “It’s not a prison, it’s a fortress. Marry me. Because you love me. Because of the baby. Because you want to protect our love.” “And all this time I thought you were afraid of commitment.” “I am,” Cole said. “I’m terrified you won’t make one.

excused her behaviour because I knew she was under Lyndon’s influence and, even if by some miracle she had refused to believe his version of events, she would never openly defy him. Yet she was my mother. How could she abandon me in a way Jane could not? Her own daughter. Why hadn’t she helped? In fact, she was the only one who could have overruled my brother. Why didn’t my mother love me enough to risk everything? Those thoughts would forever haunt me.

Prior to the age of irony, she thought, kitsch was already established. ‘It was low art’s idea of high art,’ she said – the aesthetic of people with no taste. Its keynote was sentimentality, not simply in conception but in use. Trash, for her, was another thing altogether, and it was with trash she found herself at home.