Quote

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.

Paula McLain

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Paula McLain
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: October 7
Author
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Fresno
California
Hold
Future
Hope
History
Knit
Past
Marry
Together
Believed
Tradition
Stay

More quotes by Paula McLain

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... and yet he could also be very charming, in a bookish, infinitely apologetic way.
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I also liked to look around at the houses surrounding the park and wonder about the people who filled them, what kinds of marriages they had and how they loved or hurt each other on any given day, and if they were happy, and whether they thought happiness was a sustainable thing.
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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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Dogs are easy. If their tails are up and their eyes are soft, you're in.
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And sometimes I think there isn’t anything to us but our mistakes.
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I knew that I could hate him all I wanted for the way he was hurting me, but I couldn’t ever stop loving him, absolutely, for what he was.
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But love is love. It makes you do terribly stupid things.
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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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The way I see it, how can you really say you'll love a person longer than love lasts?
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Books could be an incredible adventure. I stayed under my blanket and barely moved, and no one would have guessed how my mind raced and my heart soared with stories.
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I preferred to look at the sea, which said nothing and never made you feel alone.
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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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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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Nothing hurts if you don't let it.
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All that was left for me was a terrible kind of paralysis, this waiting game, this heartbreak game.
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There was only today to throw yourself into without thinking about tomorrow, let alone forever. To keep you from thinking, there was liquor, an ocean's worth at least, all the usual vices and plenty of rope to hang yourself with. Love is a beautiful liar.
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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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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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I'd never met anyone so vibrant or alive. He moved like light.
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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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