320 pages
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“It is a bitter-sweet thing, knowing two cultures. Once you leave your birthplace nothing is ever the same.”
― quote from Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris
“Such is the nature of an expatriate life. Stripped of romance, perhaps that's what being an expat is all about: a sense of not wholly belonging. [...] The insider-outsider dichotomy gives life a degree of tension. Not of a needling, negative variety but rather a keep-on-your-toes sort of tension that can plunge or peak with sudden rushes of love or anger. Learning to recognise and interpret cultural behaviour is a vital step forward for expats anywhere, but it doesn't mean that you grow to appreciate all the differences.”
― quote from Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris
“The trail of lime trees outside our building is still a public loo. …where else are they supposed to go to the toilet in a city where public toilets are about as common as UFO sightings?” (pp.281-82)”
― quote from Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris
“I know of no other place that is so fascinating yet so frustrating, so aware of the world and its own place within it but at the same time utterly insular. A country touched by nostalgia, with a past so great - so marked by brilliance and achievement - that French people today seem both enriched and burdened by it. France is like a maddening, moody lover who inspires emotional highs and lows. One minute it fills you with a rush of passion, the next you're full of fury, itching to smack the mouth of some sneering shopkeeper or smug civil servant. Yes, it's a love-hate relationship.”
― quote from Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris
“You'd think the sight of beautiful Place Vendôme would lift my spirits but oddly the arc of jewellery - so obviously beyond the means of a jobless person like me - only depresses me more. I plod on feeling confused, guilty even, that I should feel unhappy in a place that looks like paradise.”
― quote from Almost French: Love and a New Life in Paris
“The most insightful thing I ever heard, was overheard. I was waiting for a rail replacement bus in Hackney Wick. These two old women weren’t even talking to me - not because I’d offended them, I hadn’t, I’d been angelic at that bus stop, except for the eavesdropping. Rail replacement buses take an eternity, because they think they’re doing you a favour by covering for the absent train, you’ve no recourse.
Eventually the bus appeared, on the distant horizon, and one of the women, with the relief and disbelief that often accompanies the arrival of public transport said, ‘Oh look, the bus is coming.’ The other woman - a wise woman, seemingly aware that her words and attitude were potent and poetic enough to form the final sentence in a stranger’s book - paused, then said, ‘The bus was always coming.”
― Russell Brand, quote from My Booky Wook
“Jenny: But surely Lord Blakely could not abandon his estates for so long.
Gareth: No. Lord Blakely could not. Not unless he had someone he could trust to run his estates in his absence. And Lord Blakely...Well, Lord Blakely did not trust anyone.
Jenny: Lord Blakely is talking about himself in the third person, past tense. Its disturbing.”
― Courtney Milan, quote from Proof by Seduction
“according to Alamoth; 21Mattithiah, Elipheleh, Mikneiah, Obed-Edom, Jeiel, and Azaziah, to direct with harps on the Sheminith; 22Chenaniah, chief of the Levites, was in charge of the music because he was skillful; 23Berechiah and Elkanah were doorkeepers for the ark; 24Shebaniah, Joshaphat, Nethanel, Amasai, Zechariah, Benaiah, and Eliezer, the priests, were to blow the trumpets before the ark of God; and Obed-Edom and Jehiah were doorkeepers for the ark. The Ark Is Moved to Jerusalem 25With joy David and the elders of Israel and the captains over thousands went to bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord from the house of Obed-Edom.† 26And so it was, when God helped the Levites who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord, they offered seven bulls and seven rams.† 27David was clothed with a robe of fine linen, as were all the Levites who bore the ark, the singers, and Chenaniah the music master with the singers. David also wore a linen ephod.† 28Thus all of Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the Lord with shouting and the sound of the horn, with trumpets and cymbals, making music with stringed instruments and harps. 29And it happened, as the ark of the covenant of the Lord came to the City of David, that Michal, Saul's daughter, looked out through a window and saw King David dancing and playing music; and she despised him in her heart.”
― quote from The Orthodox Study Bible
“You're no better than Sharpclaw and Sparrowpelt. They look down their noses at us because we stay loyal to our housefolk as well as our Clan. I thought you were different, Leafstar, but I was wrong”
― Erin Hunter, quote from SkyClan's Destiny
“Worrying was painful .... but compared to the alternative, a privilege”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
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