“Everybody works . . . . That's what life is. Work and a little play and a lot of prayer.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
“If two people love the same thing, she reasoned, then they must love each other, at least a little, even if they never say it.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
“In the end, it's only the moments that we have, the kiss on the palm, the joint wonder at the furrowed texture of a fir trunk or at the infinitude of grains of sand in a dune. Only the moments.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
“Work is love made plain, whether man’s work or woman’s work.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
“How love builds itself unconsciously, he thought, out of the momentous ordinary.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
“In the end, it's only the moments that we have.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
“People who would be that close to her, she thought, a matter of a few arms' lengths, looking, looking, and they would never know her.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
“The winsome lilt of Digna humming in the garden. Her knowing, almost teasing look, not quite a smile, when she knew she had the upper hand about something, and his willing acquiescence. Her coaxing in the dark next to him - What was your favorite part of the day? - to which he'd always say, because he always thought it - now, touching you. He'd feel the lump of truth form in his throat, the swell of love in his loins. And afterward, the peace of her rhythmic breathing, steady as a Frisian clock, her simple uncomposed lullaby. Those are things he would, in some final, stretched-out moment, relive. How love builds itself unconsciously, he thought, out of the momentous ordinary.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
“The painting showed she did not yet know that lives end abruptly, that much of living is repetition and separation, that buttons forever need re-sewing no matter how ferociously one works the thread, that nice things almost happen.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
“No one but another painter could know the delicacy required to balance the complexities, to keep reality at bay in order to remain in the innermost center of his work.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
“Now he knew . . . that there was nothing so vital as paying attention, and perfecting the humble offices of love.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
“She thought of all the people in all the paintings she had seen that day, not just Father's, in all the paintings of the world, in fact. Their eyes, the particular turn of a head, their loneliness or suffering or grief was borrowed by an artist to be seen by other people throughout the years who would never see them face to face. People who would be that close to her, she thought, a matter of a few arms' lengths, looking, looking, and they would never know her.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
“It was strange: When you reduced even a fledgling love affair to its essentials - I loved her, she maybe loved me, I was foolish, I suffered - it became vacuous and trite, meaningless to anyone else. In the end, it's only the moments that we have, the kiss on the palm, the joint wonder at the furrowed texture of a fir trunk or at the infinitude of grains of sand in a dune. Only the moments.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
“I came to see that knowing what love isn't might be just as valuable, though infinitely less satisfying, as knowing what it is.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
“She was a desperate woman with frailties just like her, temptations just like her, a woman who had needs, a woman who loved almost to the point of there being no more her anymore, a woman who probably cried too much, just like her, a woman afraid, wanting to believe rather than believing [...]”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
“The only place Aletta and I could be together unseen was just under the rafters in the church tower, a circumstance that propelled us into an earlier intimacy than what we would have known had we been permitted to walk together Sunday afternoons under the wide sky.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
Susan Vreeland
Born place: in Racine, WI, The United States
Born date January 20, 1946
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“To function efficiently, any group of people or employees must have faith in their leader."- Capt. Bligh(ret.)”
― Robert Lynn Asprin, quote from Another Fine Myth
“Nu puteam crede că sunt și eu asemenea celorlalte mii de muritori nefericiți, care iubesc și uită, și mor fără să socotească nimic etern, nimic definitiv.”
― Mircea Eliade, quote from Maitreyi
“Taalim-o-tadrees ki barhi bad naseebi yeh hai ky aam ustaad amuman oast darjay ka shakhs hota hai aur woh zehni, jismani aur jazbaati tor per lakiir key fakiir qisam ki batin sochta hai. Isy zabt-o-nazam sy middle calss logo sy aur parhaku talbah ko parhany sy muhabbat hoti hai. Lykin sara din woh barhi qadar awar shakhsieto aur in ky karnaamo ki misalen dyta hai. Aysy log jinhuny kabhi mawshray ky saath mutabqat na ki. aam tareen hoty hoy woh aysy logo ki taalim-e-aam kerta hai jin ki satah per woh soch bhi nahi sakta , jin ki satah per woh soch bhi nahi sakta. Is ka apna kirdaar in bechu ko aam banany per masar rehta hai aur iski taalim bechu ko khaas banany per uksati hai. School sy bhaag jany waly bechu ki jagah school mai nahi hoti lykin inhi baaghi bechu ko bench per kharha ker ky in azeem shakhsieto ki rosahn misalen di jati hain jo khud school sy bhagy hoty hyn. Woh bechu ko geniouses ki kitaaben padha ker aam bnany ki koshish kerta hai aur yehi taalim ka sub sy barha almiyah hy." Bano Qudsia”
― Bano Qudsia, quote from Raja Gidh / راجه گدھ
“The battle of Iwo Jima would quickly turn into a primitive contest of gladiators: Japanese gladiators fighting from caves and tunnels like the catacombs of the Colosseum, and American gladiators aboveground, exposed on all sides, using liquid gasoline to burn their opponents out of their lethal hiding places.
All of this on an island five and a half miles long and two miles wide. An area smaller than Doc Bradley's hometown of Antigo, but bearing ten times the humanity. A car driving sixty miles an hour could cover its length in five and a half minutes. For the slogging, dying Marines, it would take more than a month.”
― James D. Bradley, quote from Flags of Our Fathers
“I've got a mind to turn you over my knee and spank the spoiled hell out of you”
― Larissa Ione, quote from Sin Undone
Fifteen Dogs
The Gifting
Tulip Fever
King Hall
BarracudaBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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