The Miniaturist

Every woman is the architect of her own fortune.

In suffering we find our truest selves.

Pity, unlike hate, can be boxed and put away.

Growing older does not seem to make you more certain, Nella thinks. It simply presents you with more reasons for doubt.

Everything Man sees he takes for a toy. Thus is he always, forever a boy.

A lifetime isn't enough to know how a person will behave.

Marin believes love is better in the chase than caught.

Amsterdam: Where the pendulum swings from God to a guilder.

The surface of Amsterdam thrives on these mutual acts of surveillance, the neighborly smothering of a person's spirit.

Marin believes love is better in the chase than caught,’ she says. He raises his eyebrows. ‘That does not surprise me. It is not better. But it is easier. One’s imagination is always more generous. And yet, the chase always tires you out in the end.

My brother knows the danger of having nothing to do.

You are sunlight through a window, which I stand in, warmed. My darling.

Here she is a puppet, a vessel for others to pour their speech. And it is not a man she has married, but a world.

For what am I, she wonders, but a product of my own imagination?

Growing older, does not seem to make you more certain. It simply presents you with more reasons for doubt.

Love is best a phantom than reality, better in the chase than caught.

You are a stone, thrown upon a lake. But the ripples you create will never make you still.

EVERY WOMAN IS THE ARCHITECT OF HER OWN FORTUNE

Everything man sees he takes for a toy. 'Thus is he always, forever a boy.

But the words she chooses withhold their best qualities, they refuse to match the way she feels inside.

Nothing here is more fabulous than the truth

You have to keep your wealth afloat and no one will do it for you. It'll run through your fingers if you don't care.

Then where is home, Johannes?" He looks at the maps on his wall. "I don't know," He says. "Where comfort is. And that is hard to find.

The turnip cannot thrive in the tulips patch of soil.

Growing older does not seem to make you more certain. It simply presents you with more reasons for doubt.

She has always thought that kindness was an active thing. But the not doing of something, an act of restraint -- could that be kindness too?

In suffering do we find our truest selves,” she says.

Souls and purses, she thinks, these two are obsessed with souls and purses.

The air is hot, the atmosphere a bruise.

How do I begin to love you?—the