“After living at sea for twenty years or more, the female loggerhead returns to the beach of her birth to nest. She travels hundreds of miles through the Atlantic, her three-hundred-pound, eddish-brown carapace filled with hundreds of fertile eggs.”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House
“But strength without flexibility makes one hard. Come September, when those fierce winds blow in from the sea, those hardwoods crack, splinter and fall. But the pliant palms are resilient and they bend with the wind. This is the secret of a Southern woman. Strength, resilience and beauty. We are never hard.”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House
“A woman’s life has so many demands because she is the axis around which so many little planets spin.”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House
“Consider the turtle. Perchance you have worried, despaired of the world, meditated the end of life, and all things seem rushing to destruction; but nature has steadily and serenely advanced with the turtle’s pace. The young turtle spends its infancy within its shell. It gets experience and learns the way of the world through that wall. While it rests warily on the edge of its hole, rash schemes are undertaken by men and fail. French empires rise or fall, but the turtle is developed only so fast. What’s a summer? Time for a turtle’s egg to hatch. So is the turtle developed, fitted to endure, for he outlives twenty French dynasties. One turtle knows several Napoleons. They have no worries, have no cares, yet has not the great world existed for them as much as for you? —Henry David Thoreau Journal August 28, 1856”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House
“It was chilling to wake up at forty years of age to find she had no friends, no interests and no investments in anything unconnected to her work.”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House
“loggerhead. 1. Latin: Caretta caretta. A tropical sea turtle with a hard shell and a large head. 2. a stupid fellow; blockhead. 3. at loggerheads; in disagreement; in a quarrel.”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House
“Stop what you’re doing and observe your children! Lovie wanted to say to the young mother. Quick, set aside your chores and turn your head. See how they laugh with such abandon? Only the very young can laugh like that. Look how they are giving you clues to who they are.”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House
“worry about you, Caretta. You are a strong woman, true enough. But strength without flexibility makes one hard. Come September, when those fierce winds blow in from the sea, those hardwoods crack, splinter and fall. But the pliant palms are resilient and they bend with the wind. This is the secret of a Southern woman. Strength, resilience and beauty. We are never hard.”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House
“love was never a sin. Not loving, now that was the very worst kind of sin,”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House
“But now her children were grown-up and she felt every inch of the distance between them, stretching further over the years.”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House
“She was nearly seventy years old. There was no time left for regret or misgivings, no time for dreams of what might have been.”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House
“Please, Lord, answer this one small prayer. Not just for me, but for Cara. Help me play with my child once more before I die. Bring my Cara home.”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House
“, no time for dreams of what might have been. There were plans to be made. The beach house —and all the secrets it held— had to be placed in secure hands. Too much had been sacrificed for too many years to let the secrets slip out now. Too many reputations were at stake. She had but one hope. “Lord,” she prayed, her voice raspy in her tight throat. “I’m not here to complain. You know me better than that after all this time. But the Bible says You never close a door without opening a window. So I’m praying for You to open the window. You know how things are between Cara and me. It will probably take a miracle to make”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House
“Lovie stood alone gazing toward the west. The day’s light extinguished and the night grew dark and silent save for the clicking of the swaying sea oats and the gentle lapping of waves along the shore. As ghosts of the past rose up to swirl in the hallucinatory colors of twilight, she sighed deeply, clasping her hands tight in front of her as one in prayer. She was nearly seventy years old. There was no time left for regret or misgivings, no time for dreams of what might have been. There were plans to be made. The beach house—and all the secrets it held—had to be placed in secure hands. Too much had been sacrificed for too many years to let the secrets slip out now. Too many reputations were at stake.”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House
“Why didn’t you tell me? It’s all such a complicated mess.” “Most lives are if you live long enough, my darling.” “I’ve”
― Mary Alice Monroe, quote from The Beach House
Mary Alice Monroe
Born place: Evanston, The United States
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“Laughter is sunshine, it chases winter from the human face.”
― Victor Hugo, quote from Les Misérables
“Peter would probably throw a party if I stopped breathing.'
'Well,' he says, 'I would only go if there was cake.”
― Veronica Roth, quote from Divergent
“Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-browed night;
Give me my Romeo; and, when I shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night...”
― William Shakespeare, quote from Romeo and Juliet
“It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, to absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.”
― Charlotte Brontë, quote from Jane Eyre
“The mask was a thing on it's own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.”
― William Golding, quote from Lord of the Flies
The Broken Kingdoms
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The Court of the Air
Kuinka Proust voi mu...
The Great Unexpected
BookQuoters 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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