Quote

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

Paula McLain

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Paula McLain

Image
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
Image
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.
Paula McLain
Image
Not everyone out in a storm wants to be saved
Paula McLain
Image
And sometimes I think there isn’t anything to us but our mistakes.
Paula McLain
Image
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.
Paula McLain
Image
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
Image
... and yet he could also be very charming, in a bookish, infinitely apologetic way.
Paula McLain
Image
All that was left for me was a terrible kind of paralysis, this waiting game, this heartbreak game.
Paula McLain
Image
You have to digest life. You have to chew it up and love it all through.
Paula McLain
Image
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
Image
Dogs are easy. If their tails are up and their eyes are soft, you're in.
Paula McLain
Image
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
Image
Though I often looked for one, I finally had to admit that there could be no cure for Paris.
Paula McLain
Image
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
Image
But love is love. It makes you do terribly stupid things.
Paula McLain
Image
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.
Paula McLain
Image
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
Image
I'd never met anyone so vibrant or alive. He moved like light.
Paula McLain
Image
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
Image
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.
Paula McLain