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My life was my life I would have to stare it down, somehow, and make it work for me.

Paula McLain

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Paula McLain
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: October 7
Author
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Fresno
California
Make
Would
Life
Stare
Staring
Somehow
Work

More quotes by Paula McLain

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I'd never met anyone so vibrant or alive. He moved like light.
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I'd had my share of rain. My mother's illness ... had weighed on me, but the years before had been heavy, too. I was only twenty eight.
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But when Bumby nursed, his fist clutching the fabric of my robe, his eyes soft and bottomless and locked on mine, as if I were the very heart of his universe, I couldn't help but melt into him.
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... and yet he could also be very charming, in a bookish, infinitely apologetic way.
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Not everyone out in a storm wants to be saved
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Maybe happiness was an hourglass already running out, the grains tipping, sifting past each other. Maybe it was a state of mind.
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She was also incredibly confident, with a way of moving and talking that communicated that she didn't need anyone to tell her she was beautiful or worthwhile.
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I preferred to look at the sea, which said nothing and never made you feel alone.
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I miss good old-fashioned honorable people just trying to make something of life. Simply, without hurting anyone else. I know that makes me a sap.
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Nothing hurts if you don't let it.
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To marry was to say you believed in the future and in the past, too-that history and tradition and hope could stay knit together to hold you up.
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And sometimes I think there isn’t anything to us but our mistakes.
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Why is it every other person you meet says they're an artist? A real artist doesn't need to gas on about it, he doesn't have time. He does his work and sweats it out in silence, and no one can help him at all.
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More and more I find myself at a loss for words and didn't want to hear other people talking either. Their conversations seemed false and empty. I preferred to look at the sea, which said nothing and never made you feel alone.
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Happiness is so awfully complicated, but freedom isn't. You're either tied down or you're not.
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Dogs are easy. If their tails are up and their eyes are soft, you're in.
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It was our favorite part of the day, this in-between time, and it always seemed to last longer than it should--a magic and lavender space unpinned from the hours around it, between worlds.
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This was my one brush with love. Was it love? It felt awful enough. I spent another two years crawling around in the skin of it, smoking too much and growing too thin and having stray thoughts of jumping from my balcony like a tortured heroine in a Russian novel.
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Though I often looked for one, I finally had to admit that there could be no cure for Paris.
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I would gladly have climbed out of my skin and into his that night, because I believed that was what love meant.
Paula McLain