Sandra Gulland · 448 pages
Rating: (14K votes)
“I play out the cards. They say: This is Heaven, this is Hell. It is one.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“He calls me Josephine. He says I'm an angel, a saint, his good lucky star. I know I'm no angel, but in truth I have begun to like this Josephine he sees. She is intelligent; she amuses; she is pleasing. She is grace and charm and heart. Unlike Rose; scared, haunted and needy. Unlike Rose with her sad life.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“A feeling of disquiet continues to haunt me. As a youth one dreams of love; by the time one wakes, it is too late.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“The Queen has been guillotined, accused of crimes beyond imagining. Last night she appeared to me in a dream, handing me her head.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“You are thinking of the past." I put my arms around her. She'd risen from childbed too soon. "We are the past," she said.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“Daggers ever at the ready, I went about the day: children fed, linens mended, bedclothes aired. In little ways one conquers fear.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“I lowered myself into an armchair. I was enveloped in a cloud of dust. All that remained of my life was in my lap. I sat for a time thus, as still as the mute objects that surrounded me. How little it all meant, in the end.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“I kissed his cheek. "My King." I swooped into the courtly curtsy he'd taught me as a girl, regally kicking an imaginary train aside as I turned to go. He was laughing silently as I left. For a moment I saw that spark again. I did not say goodbye.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“Now I have discovered where it is that she goes. It's the guillotine that draws her, across the river in the Place Louis Quinze- Place de la Revolution now-where daily crowds gather, the vendors selling lemonade, the children playing prisoner's base, the old ladies gossiping as the heads fall.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“One leads, willing or not," Deputy Tallien answered. "It takes courage to face one's own death but even more so the death of others. We are learning this lesson well." The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. by Sandra Gullan”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
Sandra Gulland
Born place: in Miami, The United States
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“That’s the funny thing about arriving somewhere, Vin,” he said with a wink. “Once you’re there, the only thing you can really do is leave again.”
― Brandon Sanderson, quote from Mistborn: The Final Empire
“I am not the heroine of this story.
And I'm not trying to be cute. It's the truth. I'm diagnosed borderline and seriously fucked-up. I hold grudges. I bottle my hate until it ferments into poison, and then I get high off the fumes. I'm completely dysfunctional and that's the way I like it, so don't expect a character arc where I finally find Redemption, Growth, and Change, or learn How to Forgive Myself and Others.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Black Iris
“Were it in anywise possible for something to occur apart from either the direct agency or permission of God, then that something would be independent of Him, and He would at once cease to be Supreme. Now”
― Arthur W. Pink, quote from The Attributes of God
“This last night we tear into each other, as if to wound, as if to find the key to everything before morning.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Coming Through Slaughter
“...One keeps remembering what Lynch says about
Turkish women in his book-'they appear conscious of
some immense and inexpiable sin'."
Father Chantry·Pigg said nothing, but he looked as if
he thought the Turkish women, and indeed all women,
did well to be conscious of this, for they had committed it in Eden, and had been committing it ever since merely by existing. He did not dare, however, to say this to aunt Dot and Halide, who erroneously believed men to be equally sinful, and even (in Turkey) more.”
― Rose Macaulay, quote from The Towers of Trebizond
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