The Bookshop On The Corner Quotes

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Because every day with a book is slightly better than one without, and I wish you nothing but the happiest of days.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
I am of the old-fashioned conviction that reading is a pleasure to be carefully guarded at all times
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
The problem with good things that happen is that very often they disguise themselves as awful things.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief #1))
There was a universe inside every human being every bit as big as the universe outside them. Books were the best way Nina knew - apart from, sometimes, music - to breach the barrier, to connect the internal universe with the external, the words acting merely as a conduit between the two worlds.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
Because every day with a book is slightly better than one without, and I wish you nothing but the happiest of days. Now,
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief #1))
Books had been her solace when she was sad, her friends when she was lonely. They had mended her heart when it was broken, and encouraged her to hope when she was down.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
At least books could never let you down.
Rebecca Raisin (The Bookshop on the Corner (The Bookshop, #1; The Gingerbread Cafe, #2.5))
This particular book felt familiar, like an old friend. The characters drew me into their world, and I blocked out mine for the rest of the afternoon.
Rebecca Raisin (The Bookshop on the Corner (The Bookshop, #1; The Gingerbread Cafe, #2.5))
Dogs are tremendously good at showing you you don't have to check your phone every two seconds to have a happy life.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
I never understand,” he said, shaking his head, “why anyone would go to the trouble of making up new people in this world when there’s already billions of the buggers I don’t give a shit about.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief #1))
Maybe some people were destined to be alone. But, I reminded myself, you're never alone if you read.
Rebecca Raisin (The Bookshop on the Corner (The Bookshop, #1; The Gingerbread Cafe, #2.5))
Because life is like that, isn’t it? If you thought of all the tiny things that divert your path one way or another, some good, some bad, you’d never do anything ever again. And some people don’t. Some people go through life not really deciding to do much, not wanting to, always too fearful of the consequences to try something new. Of course, that in itself is also a decision.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
He wished he could prop his fearful self up in a corner like a broom and walk away.
Nina George (The Little Paris Bookshop)
Be silent, hide away and let your thoughts and longings rise and set in the deep places of your heart. Let dreams move silently as stars, in wonder more than you can tell. Let them fulfill you—and be still.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
They were probably reading on their tablets,” said Nina loyally. She loved her e-reader, too. “Yes, I know,” said the man. “But I couldn’t see. I couldn’t see what they were reading or ask them if it was good, or make a mental note to look for it later. It was as if suddenly, one day, all the books simply disappeared.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
Time cleaning was less time reading, so I usually just did the minimal amount, and left it for another day, a day that would never come.
Rebecca Raisin (The Bookshop on the Corner (The Bookshop, #1; The Gingerbread Cafe, #2.5))
It was horribly difficult, she reflected, to have finally found the place you thought of as home, only to realize you were going to have to move on again.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
It's one of the uncanniest things I know to watch a real book on its career―it follows you and follows you and drives you into a corner and makes you read it.
Christopher Morley (The Haunted Bookshop (Parnassus, #2))
There's a certain pull books have on a person if they listen hard enough.
Rebecca Raisin (The Bookshop on the Corner (The Bookshop, #1; The Gingerbread Cafe, #2.5))
There was a universe inside every human being every bit as big as the universe outside them.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
If you weren’t an extrovert, if you weren’t shoving yourself out into the open all the time, posting selfies everywhere, demanding attention, talking constantly, people just gazed right past you. You got overlooked.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
The glow in The Perch dimmed, her corner untouched by the blast of light and heat from the hearth across the room, so she asked for a lantern to read by. The kid obliged, and despite the uncomfortable chair and the ache in her leg and the backwater in which she’d been abandoned, she was absorbed. She was transported. She was elsewhere.
Travis Baldree (Bookshops & Bonedust (Legends & Lattes, #0))
Though my theory was books chose us, and not the other way around.
Rebecca Raisin (The Bookshop on the Corner (The Bookshop, #1; The Gingerbread Cafe, #2.5))
Because life is like that, isn’t it? If you thought of all the tiny things that divert your path one way or another, some good, some bad, you’d never do anything ever again.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Ernest Hemingway quote, ‘There is no friend as loyal as a book.
Rebecca Raisin (The Bookshop on the Corner (The Bookshop, #1; The Gingerbread Cafe, #2.5))
A nice manner and a level head would surely get you much further. But that didn't cut much with the big cheeses, who liked flakey mission statements and loud, confident remarks.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
Dogs are tremendously good at showing you you don’t have to check your phone every two seconds to have a happy life.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Some stories consumed you, they made time stop, your worries float into the ether, and when it came to my reading habits I chose romance over any other genre. The appeal of the happy ever after, the winsome heroine being adored for who she was, and the devastatingly handsome hero with more to him than met the eye tugged at my heart.
Rebecca Raisin (The Bookshop on the Corner (The Bookshop, #1; The Gingerbread Cafe, #2.5))
I just . . . I built him up in my mind so much.” “Too much reading.” “In my head, he was this kind of lost romantic hero.” “He can’t get lost, he drives a train.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Endlessly welcoming and hospitable, particularly up here. It didn't necessarily mean she belonged, did it?
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
However, these days everyone holds their stupid smartphone in front of them the entire time in case somebody likes a dog picture on Facebook and they miss it by two seconds...
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
Yes! Do you never listen?” “I never listen.” “Okay, well, it’s a good thing I don’t talk much then, isn’t it?
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Helping to match people to the book that would change their life, or make them fall in love, or get over a love affair gone wrong. And for the children, she could show them where to dive into a crocodile-infested river, or fly through the stars, or open the door of a wardrobe...
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
Reading is being in stuff." Ben squinted. "Like actually being there?" "Like actually being there. You plug straight into the writer's brain. It's just you and them. You experience what they experience.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
Any bookseller will tell you that, even with 100,000 booksneatly sorted and shelved in a well-lit, warm shop, if you put an unopened box of books in a dark, cold, dimly lit corner, customers will be riffling through it in a matter of moments. The appeal of a box of unsorted, unpriced stock is extroidinary.
Shaun Bythell (The Diary of a Bookseller (Diary of a Bookseller, #1))
Book in bath. Paperbacks are ideal, obviously, and the worst that can happen is you have to dry it out on the radiator (all my children’s handed-down Harry Potters are utterly warped), but I read a lot on my e-reader and I will let you into a secret: I turn the pages with my nose. You may not have been blessed with a magnificent Scots-Italian Peter Capaldi nose like me, but with a bit of practice you should soon find it’s perfectly possible to keep one of your hands in the water and turn the pages at the same time.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief #1))
In front of the fire If you haven’t got a fire, a candle will do. The one thing I really look forward to as the nights draw in is a big cozy fire and a good book—the longer the better. I love a really, really long novel, a large cup of tea, or glass of wine depending on how close to the weekend we are (or how much I am in the mood to stretch the definition of what constitutes the weekend), and a bit of peace and quiet. A dog helps, too. Dogs are tremendously good at showing you you don’t have to check your phone every two seconds to have a happy life.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief #1))
There was a universe inside every human being every bit as big as the universe outside them. Books were the best way Nina knew - apart from, sometimes, music - to breach the barrier, to connect the internal universe with the external, the words acting merely as a conduit between the two worlds.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
Some people go through life not really deciding to do much, not wanting to, always too fearful of the consequences to try something new. Of course, that in itself is also a decision. You’ll get somewhere whether you put any effort into it or not. But doing something new is so hard. And a few things can help.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Once upon a time when I was young, I had a lovely boyfriend who bought me a hammock and hooked it up on my tiny and highly perilous roof terrace, where I spent many happy hours just rocking and reading, eating Quavers and reflecting on my lovely handsome boyfriend. Then, I married him and we had a bunch of children and a dog and moved somewhere where it rains all the time, and I think the hammock is in storage. This, my friends, is apparently what's known as 'happily ever after'.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
Some people buried their fears in food, she knew, and some in booze, and some in planning elaborate engagements and weddings and other life events that took up every spare moment of their time in case unpleasant thoughts intruded. But for Nina, whenever reality, or the grimmer side of reality, threatened to invade, she always turned to a book.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
She stared into the distance and tried to think, honestly and properly, about her life: up here where it was clearer, and she could breathe, and she wasn’t surrounded by a million people in a great hurry dashing or grabbing or shouting or achieving things in their lives that they plastered all over Facebook and Instagram, making you feel inadequate.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Just do something. You might make a mistake, then you can fix it. But if you do nothing, you can't fix anything. And your life might turn out to be full of regrets.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
She would be as kick-ass as Katniss Everdeen, as uncompromising as Elizabeth Bennet, as brave as Hero.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
You’ve moved an entire country away with a big bunch of books and a van. said Surinder. I already think you are totally stupid.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
Some stories consumed you, they made time stop, your worries float into the ether,
Rebecca Raisin (The Bookshop on the Corner (The Bookshop, #1; The Gingerbread Cafe, #2.5))
You know, on the bus, everyone used to read books. But then they were fiddling on their phones or those big phones, I don't know what they're called.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
Just do something. You might make a mistake, then you can fix it. But if you do nothing, you can’t fix anything. And your life might turn out to be full of regrets.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
You know that frustrating feeling of losing the page in your book? You didn't want to go too far ahead and spoil the surprise, and you didn't want to go too far back, so you kind of stagnated and started from a page that didn't seem quite right, but you read it a few times just to convince yourself... That was how I felt about my life. A little lost, I guess you could say.
Rebecca Raisin (The Bookshop on the Corner (The Bookshop, #1; The Gingerbread Cafe, #2.5))
that seasons would come and go with the clouds passing across the sky, but also that everything would come around again and find itself much as it had been generations ago, in the farms and the rivers and the towering cliffs and the gentle running valleys, where life did not move so fast that there wasn’t time to settle down with a cup of tea and a piece of shortbread and a book.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
I never understand," he said, shaking his head, "why anyone would go through the trouble of making up new people in this world when there's already billions of the buggers I don't give a shit about.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
Some people buried their fears in food, she knew, and some in booze, and some in planning elaborate engagements and weddings and other life events that took up every spare moment of their time in case unpleasant thoughts intruded. But for Nina, whenever reality, or the grimmer side of reality, threatened to invade, she always turned to a book. Books had been her solace when she was sad, her friends when she was lonely. They had mended her heart when it was broken, and encouraged her to hope when she was down. Yet much as she disputed the fact, it was time to admit that books were not real life.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
She had always been dainty, and never quite confident enough to dance where anyone might see. Here, though, nobody cared or noticed. The emphasis wasn't on looking good or being sexy or standing out; it was about hurling yourself into it and dancing as if you didn't have a care in the world, or a worry, or even a thought; it was dancing as catharsis, and Nina very quickly found that she absolutely loved it.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
She stepped forward and grabbed a huge romance Nina adored from the top of the pile. “Look at this! You already have it.” “Yes, I know, but this is the hardback first edition. Look! It’s beautiful! Never been read!
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Oh no, she was never elitist. She said that far too many women are the accomplices of cruel, indifferent men. They lie for these men. They lie to their own children. Because their fathers treated them exactly the same way. These women always retain some hope that love is hiding behind the cruelty, so that the anguish doesn't drive them mad. Truth is, though, Max, there's no love there. Max wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.
Nina George (The Little Paris Bookshop)
You can’t save the world, but keep trying in any small way you can.” His mouth lifted at the corners in an almost embarrassed smile. “Such as an old man collecting battered and singed books to keep voices alive.” He set his age-spotted hand on hers, its warmth comforting. “Or finding a story to help a young mother forget her pain.” He removed his hand and straightened. “It doesn’t matter how you fight, but that you never, never stop.
Madeline Martin (The Last Bookshop in London)
Had a million different tiny things happened. Because life is like that, isn’t it? If you thought of all the tiny things that divert your path one way or another, some good, some bad, you’d never do anything ever again.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Nina, I have tried to be patient. I have tried to help when things go wrong and you buy a book and things go well and you buy a book and it rains so you bring home some books and it’s sunny so you get some books. But . . .
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
She’d read lots of books about people finding new lives, which hadn’t helped her mood either, had made her feel more and more trapped and stuck where she was, as if everyone except her was managing to get away and do interesting things.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Nina had been told regularly since she was a child that she needed more fresh air, at which she would take her book and clamber up the apple tree at the bottom of their tatty garden, away from the car her father was always tinkering with but had never driven in all the years of her childhood—she wondered what had happened to it—and hide there, braced against the trunk, her feet swinging, burying herself in Enid Blyton or Roald Dahl until she was allowed back inside again.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief #1))
Some people buried their fears in food, she knew, and some in booze, and some in planning elaborate engagements and weddings and other life events that took up every spare moment of their time in case unpleasant thoughts intruded. But for Nina, whenever reality, or the grimmer side of reality, threatened to invade, she always turned to a book. Books had been her solace when she was sad, her friends when she was lonely. They had mended her heart when it was broken, and encouraged her to hope when she was down.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
whenever reality, or the grimmer side of reality, threatened to invade, she always turned to a book. Books had been her solace when she was sad, her friends when she was lonely. They had mended her heart when it was broken, and encouraged her to hope when she was down.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
the soothing cadence of somebody reading always had a transformative effect on babies; Griffin’s theory was that children were evolutionarily engineered to listen to stories, because it stopped them from wandering off into the woods and getting eaten by hairy mammoths.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Some people go through life not really deciding to do much, not wanting to, always too fearful of the consequences to try something new. Of course, that in itself is also a decision. You’ll get somewhere whether you put any effort into it or not. But doing something new is so hard.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
And recommend them to other people: books for the brokenhearted and the happy, and people excited to be going on vacation, and people who need to know they aren’t alone in the universe, and books for children who really like monkeys, and, well, everything really. And to go places where I’m needed.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
You know that frustrating feeling of losing the page in your book? You didn’t want to go too far forward and spoil the surprise, and you didn’t want to go too far back, so you kind of stagnated and started from a page that didn’t seem quite right, but you read it a few times just to convince yourself…that was how I felt about my life.
Rebecca Raisin (The Bookshop on the Corner (The Bookshop, #1; The Gingerbread Cafe, #2.5))
sometimes she felt the world wasn’t built for people like her. Confident, big-personality people like Surinder simply didn’t understand. If you weren’t an extrovert, if you weren’t shoving yourself out into the open all the time, posting selfies everywhere, demanding attention, talking constantly, people just gazed right past you. You got overlooked. And normally she didn’t mind.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
The problem with good things that happen is that very often they disguise themselves as awful things. It would be lovely, wouldn’t it, whenever you’re going through something difficult, if someone could just tap you on the shoulder and say, “Don’t worry, it’s completely worth it. It seems like absolutely horrible crap now, but I promise it will all come good in the end,” and you could say, “Thank you, Fairy Godmother.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Tolstoy, Stendhal and Cervantes, these men follow me around. They stand in dark corners and eye me disapprovingly from beneath supercilious eyebrows. And all because I’ve never got round to reading their blasted, thousand-page, three-ton, five-generation, state-of-a-nation thingummywhatsits. I don’t care. Or rather, sometimes I do, and at other times I remember that I’m a tortoise-slow reader and that there’s a pub just around the corner.
Mark Forsyth (The Unknown Unknown: Bookshops and the delight of not getting what you wanted)
But you know when you’re watching a film you feel like you can see what’s happening?” Ben nodded. “Well, that’s one thing. But when you read a book, you feel like you’re in it.” “Like a computer game?” “No. Not like a computer game. Computer games are fun, but you’re still just looking at stuff and pressing buttons. Reading is being in stuff.” Ben squinted. “Like actually being there?” “Like actually being there. You plug straight into the writer’s brain. It’s just you and them. You experience what they experience.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Sumire and I were very alike. Devouring books came as naturally to us as breathing. Every spare moment we’d settle down in some quiet corner, endlessly turning page after page. Japanese novels, foreign novels, new works, classics, avant-garde to bestseller – as long as there was something intellectually stimulating in a book, we’d read it. We’d hang out in libraries, spend whole days browsing in Kanda, the second-hand bookshop Mecca in Tokyo. I’d never come across anyone else who read so avidly – so deeply, so widely, as Sumire, and I’m sure she felt the same.
Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)
Precollege program orientation was scheduled for two days after Watson arrived, and I discovered a few things in the meantime. 1. My uncle Leander has a memory like a steel trap. He took Watson and I to the all-you-can-eat Indian buffet around the corner from our flat, to the antiquarian bookshop to look at first editions of Faulkner, to the teahouse painted to look like a starry night, all of which Watson had mentioned in passing that he loved, and whose repetition now left Watson in a state of expansive joy. 2. I should have found this delightful. I did not. As, throughout all of this, Leander referred to Watson as my boyfriend. 2b. Loudly. 2c. He did this as often as he could. 2d. To wit: "A latte for my niece and her young man"; "Charlotte, wasn't that your Jamie's favorite, A Light in August? Faulkner's later work -"; "Child, go and get your boyfriend another napkin, we aren't barbarians/" And then that smile Leander had, something like a wolf after eating a fat peasant child.
Brittany Cavallaro (A Question of Holmes (Charlotte Holmes, #4))
A Kiss Before Dying is a gritty suspense story told with great élan—rarity enough, but what is even more rare is that the book (written while Levin was in his early twenties) contains surprises which really surprise . . . and it is relatively impervious to that awful, dreadful goblin of a reader, he or she WHO TURNS TO THE LAST THREE PAGES TO SEE HOW IT CAME OUT. Do you do this nasty, unworthy trick? Yes, you! I’m talking to you! Don’t slink away and grin into your hand! Own up to it! Have you ever stood in a bookshop, glanced furtively around, and turned to the end of an Agatha Christie to see who did it, and how? Have you ever turned to the end of a horror novel to see if the hero made it out of the darkness and into the light? If you have ever done this, I have three simple words which I feel it is my duty to convey: SHAME ON YOU! It is low to mark your place in a book by folding down the corner of the page where you left off; TURNING TO THE END TO SEE HOW IT CAME OUT is even lower. If you have this habit, I urge you to break it . . . break it at once!
Stephen King (Danse Macabre)
I have always lusted after a sepia-toned library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a sliding ladder. I fantasie about Tennessee Williams' types of evenings involving rum on the porch. I long for balmy slightly sleepless nights with nothing but the whoosh of a wooden ceiling fan to keep me company, and the joy of finding the cool spot on the bed. I would while away my days jotting down my thoughts in a battered leather-bound notebook, which would have been given to me by some former lover. My scribbling would form the basis of a best-selling novel, which they wold discuss in tiny independent bookshops on quaint little streets in forgotten corners of terribly romantic European cities. In other words, I fantasize about being credible, in that artistic, slightly bohemian way that only girls with very long legs can get away with.
Amy Mowafi (Fe-mail 2)
I wasn't lonely. I was just minus a plus one. I was never good at maths, anyway.
Rebecca Raisin (The Bookshop on the Corner (The Bookshop, #1; The Gingerbread Cafe, #2.5))
HAILED AS the twentieth century’s ‘prince of expositors’, G. Campbell Morgan was a messenger widely used by God. However, he wrestled with the integrity of Scripture early in his life. He concluded that if there were errors in the biblical message, it could not be honestly proclaimed in public as God’s holy, inerrant Word. Here is the account of how young Campbell Morgan finally concluded that the Bible was surely God’s Word. At last the crisis came when he admitted to himself his total lack of assurance that the Bible was the authoritative Word of God to man. He immediately cancelled all preaching engagements. Then, taking all his books, both those attacking and defending the Bible, he put them all in a corner cupboard. Relating this afterwards, as he did many times in preaching, he told of turning the key in the lock of the door. ‘I can hear the click of that lock now,’ he used to say. He went out of the house, and down the street to a bookshop. He bought a new Bible and, returning to his room with it, he said to himself: ‘I am no longer sure that this is what my father claims it to be – the Word of God. But of this I am sure. If it be the Word of God, and if I come to it with an unprejudiced and open mind, it will bring assurance to my soul of itself.’ ‘That Bible found me,’ he said, ‘I began to read and study it then, in 1883. I have been a student ever since, and I still am (in 1938).’1
Richard L. Mayhue (How to Study the Bible)
The problem with good things that happen is that very often they disguise themselves as awful things. It would be lovely, wouldn’t it, whenever you’re going through something difficult, if someone could just tap you on the shoulder and say, “Don’t worry, it’s completely worth it. It seems like absolutely horrible crap now, but I promise it will all come good in the end,
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
clouds
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
life is like that, isn’t it? If you thought of all the tiny things that divert your path one way or another, some good, some bad, you’d never do anything ever again.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Just do something. You might make a mistake, then you can fix it. But if you do
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
nothing, you can’t fix anything. And your life might turn out to be full of regrets.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
I want to be with books, have them all around me.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Nina, I have tried to be patient. I have tried to help when things go wrong and you buy a book and things go well and you buy a book and it rains so you bring home some books and it’s sunny so you get some books. But .
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Everyone’s different from how they look on the outside,
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
But sometimes she felt the world wasn't built for people like her
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
Because life is like that, isn’t it? If you thought of all the tiny things that divert your path one way or another, some good, some bad, you’d never do anything ever again. And some people don’t. Some people go through life not really deciding to do much, not wanting to, always too fearful of the consequences to try something new. Of course, that in itself is also a decision. You’ll get somewhere whether you put any effort into it or not. But doing something new is so hard. And a few things can help.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
It would be lovely, wouldn’t it, whenever you’re going through something difficult, if someone could just tap you on the shoulder and say, “Don’t worry, it’s completely worth it. It seems like absolutely horrible crap now, but I promise it will all come good in the end,” and you could say, “Thank you, Fairy Godmother.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
... found herself thinking how useful that would be, to have an automatic comforting device. The dog looked nice.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
She realized suddenly that despite all the new exciting feelings - of autonomy of freedom - that she'd felt since she arrived, she'd been missing the simple familiarity that came with ... well, someone you understood, she supposed.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
The Heart Shattered Glass was a courageous scream from the abyss from an abandoned woman, written in four days from the side of a precipice down which she was hurling all her worldly goods, one at a time, meditating on their meaning. It had taken the world by storm with its candor and wit. The fact that the author had subsequently fallen madly in love with and married the book’s publicist had only prolonged its popularity, but it was truly a book that deserved its worldwide fame. It was . . . She got it exactly. Exactly what it feels like. Nina looked at the tightly buttoned-up woman she had struggled to connect with and marveled, not for the first time, at the astonishing amount of seething emotion that could exist beneath the most restrained exterior. To look at Lesley you would think she was just a middle-aged shopkeeper quietly going about her business. The fact that she completely and utterly empathized with an American woman who had let her own blood drip down a mountainside in anguish, who had changed sexuality and howled at the moon with a wolf pack, just went to show. There was a universe inside every human being every bit as big as the universe outside them. Books were the best way Nina knew—apart from, sometimes, music—to breach the barrier, to connect the internal universe with the external, the words acting merely as a conduit between the two worlds.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
But when you read a book, you feel like you're in it.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
It's as if you pull something around yourself, make yourself look smaller and more insignificant. Than you already are." Nina blinked. "Like you don't want anyone to notice you.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
4. "The Heart Shattered Glass was a courageous scream from the abyss from an abandoned woman, written in four days from the side of a precipice down which she was hurling all her worldly goods, one at a time, meditating on their meaning. It had taken the world by storm with its candor and wit. The fact that the author had subsequently fallen madly in love with and married the book’s publicist had only prolonged its popularity, but it was truly a book that deserved its worldwide fame. It was . . . She got it exactly. Exactly what it feels like. Nina looked at the tightly buttoned-up woman she had struggled to connect with and marveled, not for the first time, at the astonishing amount of seething emotion that could exist beneath the most restrained exterior. To look at Lesley you would think she was just a middle-aged shopkeeper quietly going about her business. The fact that she completely and utterly empathized with an American woman who had let her own blood drip down a mountainside in anguish, who had changed sexuality and howled at the moon with a wolf pack, just went to show. There was a universe inside every human being every bit as big as the universe outside them. Books were the best way Nina knew—apart from, sometimes, music—to breach the barrier, to connect the internal universe with the external, the words acting merely as a conduit between the two worlds.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
It happens the same way every time. The woman usually stands in front of the mirror for a while, turning this way and that, checking to be certain it isn't an illusion. And, when she is at last sure it's real, a blissful smile spreads into her cheeks and flushes through her whole body. In the mirror she sees herself as she truly is: beautiful, powerful, able to do anything. And she sees that the thing she wants most of all, the thing that seemed so impossible when she first stepped into the little dress shop, is really so possible, so close, that she could reach out and touch it. "Yes," Etta says then, "as easy as pie. Speaking of which, the bookshop on the corner does the most delicious cherry pie. You really should try some." The woman nods then, still slightly stunned, and agrees, saying that pie sounds like a perfect idea. So she stumbles out of the shop in a daze, new dress tucked tightly in her arms, and wanders down All Saints' Passage to the bookshop. There, she has the best piece of cherry pie she's ever eaten and leaves with a stack of books that will make the transformation complete.
Menna van Praag (The Dress Shop of Dreams)
After years of working in public service, it had come as a bit of a surprise to her how genuinely interested she was in running a business; seeing what worked, looking at stock, and, of course, matching the right book to the right person. It was the same joy she had always felt at the library, but somehow, watching people leaving with books they could keep forever was even more profound.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
and I was selfish and wrong not to ask about your family before. I was told I should, but I didn’t listen. It’s my fault.” Marek shrugged. “Was not your fault. Was my privilege.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world. VOLTAIRE
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
It was almost the cruelest thing he did, not to leave me when I still had the chance of meeting someone else, when I still had a bit of juice left in me. Me and the woman who wrote that book—we both know we’re better than that.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner)
Porque um dia com leitura é sempre um pouquinho melhor do que um dia sem leitura, e eu desejo a você uma infinidade de dias maravilhosos.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))
Quando ficava triste, os livros eram seu consolo; quando se sentia só, eles eram seus amigos. Eram eles que cuidavam do seu coração partido e a encorajavam a manter a esperança quando estava na pior.
Jenny Colgan (The Bookshop on the Corner (Kirrinfief, #1))