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Happiness is so awfully complicated, but freedom isn't. You're either tied down or you're not.

Paula McLain

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Paula McLain
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: October 7
Author
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Fresno
California
Happiness
Freedom
Awfully
Tied
Complicated
Either

More quotes by Paula McLain

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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.
Paula McLain
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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.
Paula McLain
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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.
Paula McLain
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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.
Paula McLain
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Not everyone out in a storm wants to be saved
Paula McLain
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Dogs are easy. If their tails are up and their eyes are soft, you're in.
Paula McLain
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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.
Paula McLain
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All that was left for me was a terrible kind of paralysis, this waiting game, this heartbreak game.
Paula McLain
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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
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And sometimes I think there isn’t anything to us but our mistakes.
Paula McLain
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You have to digest life. You have to chew it up and love it all through.
Paula McLain
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Nothing hurts if you don't let it.
Paula McLain
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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.
Paula McLain
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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.
Paula McLain
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The way I see it, how can you really say you'll love a person longer than love lasts?
Paula McLain
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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.
Paula McLain
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But love is love. It makes you do terribly stupid things.
Paula McLain
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I'd never met anyone so vibrant or alive. He moved like light.
Paula McLain
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... and yet he could also be very charming, in a bookish, infinitely apologetic way.
Paula McLain
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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.
Paula McLain