Alice Hoffman · 368 pages
Rating: (38.4K votes)
“(Love) walks up to you,and when it does, you need to recognize it for what it is and, perhaps more important, for what it might become.”
“The truth frightens people because it isn't stable. It shifts every day.”
“It's not finding what's lost, it's understanding what you've found.”
“Eddie had come to understand that what a man saw and what actually existed in the natural world often were contradictory. The human eye was not capable of true sight, for it was constrained by its own humanness, clouded by regret, and opinion, and faith. Whatever was witnessed in the real world was unknowable in real time. It was the eye of the camera that captured the world as it truly was.”
“You were the one who taught me that love was never what we expected it to be and that it was all that we needed.”
“the past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go. Fate was both what we were given and what we made for ourselves.”
“Love like this was all consuming. I found that I was jealous of the strangest things - sunlight, streets, curtains, even her clothing, anything that was close to her.”
“Listen, and you'll hear a story being told, one you may need to know.”
“People will disappoint you with their cruelty every time”
“... people can surprise you in so many ways, both with cruelty and with kindness.”
“For love changes everything and forces us into lives we never imagined we might lead”
“A lifetime is a lifetime whether it lasts one night or a hundred years.”
“It’s not finding what’s lost, it’s understanding what you’ve found.”
“If you tried to right all the wrongs in the world you'd exhaust yourself in under an hour.”
“Men are men, with all their flaws, as we have ours, that’s true, but the best among them manage to discover who we really are.”
“Love like this wasn't what he'd planned or wanted or expected, surely it was indeed a trap, for even when you tried to run away, it followed you through the grass and lay down beside you, it overtook common sense and willpower.”
“I knew that men told you the truth for one of two reasons: when they wished to be rid of what they couldn’t bear to carry, or when they wished to include you in what they knew so their stories wouldn’t be lost.”
“... a man has many lives. Each day we chose the path we would take by our own actions... the past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go. Fate was both what we were give and what we made for ourselves.”
“Men will be men," Maureen told me when I wondered aloud where my father went in the evenings. "Don't complain," she advised. "That's how women find their freedom. When there's no one else at home.”
“... the past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go.”
“The air was soft, as it often was in this lovely month, and Eddie inhaled its sweetness. He found himself uplifted as he worked, caught up in something outside himself and his petty wants and needs. The clouds drifted like ice in a tumbler. Through his lens the river seemed made of light, there was the shimmer, and for a moment the world seemed whole to him.”
“The truth frightens people because it isn’t stable. It shifts every day. If you’d prefer to remain in the dark, I would understand.”
“You know what love is?...It's what you least expect.”
“Hochman had been right, the past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go. Fate was both what we were given and what we made for ourselves.”
“My father was both a scientist and a magician, but he declared that it was in literature wherein we discovered our truest natures.”
“You are the one who taught me that love was never what we expected it to be and that it was all we needed. For that, and for a thousand other things, I send my gratitude.”
“When all was said and done, it was conceivable that a being's purpose remained the same throughout his life, and Eddie's purpose was exactly what it had been when he was a boy, to pursue the light and find what was lost."
Page 87”
“And what of monsters? Can they love too? We know quite well they can. For we know that they do.”
“You are the one who taught me that love was never what we expected it to be and that it was all we needed.”
“In good time every secret must be shared and every miracle called into question.”
“Nothing is so sad, in my opinion, as the devastation wrought by age.
My poor friend. I have described him many times. Now to convey to you the difference. Crippled with arthritis, he propelled himself about in a wheelchair. His once plump frame had fallen in. He was a thin little man now. His face was lined and wrinkled. His moustache and hair, and hair, it is true, were still of a jet black colour, but candidly, though I would not for the world have hurt his feelings by saying so to him, this was a mistake. There comes a moment when hair dye is only too painfully obvious. There had been a time when I had been surprised to learn that the blackness of Poirot's hair came out of a bottle. But now the theatricality was apparent and merely created the impression that he wore a wig and had adorned his upper lip to amuse children!”
“But when you suffer with someone, you learn them. And it’s hard to kill a person you’ve learned.”
“Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. ”
“It’s just contributing to the narrative that girls have to monitor their bodies and behaviors, and boys have the license and freedom to act like animals. Don’t you think that’s unfair to girls? Don’t you think that’s shortchanging boys? The whole thing is just toxic.”
“It’s almost as if history were a waterwheel that keeps coming back to the same point in the river.”
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