“You could push people away, past their limits, even accidentally, and then it was just too late to get them back”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“Maybe children just want whatever it is they don't get. And then they grow up and give their children what they wanted, be it silence or information, affection or independence--so that child, in turn, craves something else. With every generation the pendulum swings from opposite to opposite, stillness and peace so elusive.”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“She wondered when her daughter would realise that for the most part, people weren't that different. Young and old, male or female, pretty much everyone she knew wanted the same things: The wanted to feel peace in their hearts, they wanted a life without turmoil, they wanted to be happy. The difference, she thought, was that most young people seemed to think that those things lay somewhere in the future. While most older people believed that they lay in the past.”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“Worrying was painful .... but compared to the alternative, a privilege”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“Well,” Leigh said, because there was nothing else. She looked back at the picture of herself and Pam in the blue dresses. “We did have it easier than she did. I’m sure we did. And I should thank her for that, I guess.”
Pam nodded. She looked calm, untroubled. Leigh, tapped her foot on the ottoman and glanced at her mother’s photographs. “But it felt like that was all she saw when she looked at us.” She leaned forward to get Pam’s attention. She wanted her sister to understand, to see things the way she had. “You know? I always felt like she never saw me, me as a individual. Do you know what I am saying? She gave us everything she ever wanted. But she never thought about what we wanted that it may be different. Or that we might need something that she didn’t. She never saw us separate from herself. She never saw us.” She paused, nodding in agreement with herself. That was it. She decided. She’d never put words to the feeling before, but that was it. That had been the whole trouble between them.
But when she looked back at Pam, her satisfaction vanished. Her sister’s mouth was pulled tight, her eyes wide. She looked away from Leigh, saying nothing, still the loyal confidante. But Leigh already knew. She knew what she couldn’t guess before, what Pam thought of the two of them on the porch swing, Kara talking, Pam listening. Leigh didn’t have to guess anymore. She could hear the words come out of her daughter’s mouth as clearly as they’d just come out of her own.”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“Perhaps all the difficulties of pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering in the early years wouldn’t”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“she also knew that the sadness she felt while pregnant, for strangers, for the entire world, did not feel like hormones so much as a kind of elevated consciousness, a heightened sensitivity to truth.”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.”
― Laura Moriarty, quote from The Rest of Her Life
“Go, my dear, and see how thy grandmamma does, for I hear she has been very ill; carry her a custard, and this little pot of butter.”
― Andrew Lang, quote from The Blue Fairy Book
“He was now beginning to wonder whether the jigsaw was the correct metaphor for relationships between me and women after all. It didn't take account of the sheer stubbornness of human beings, their determination to affix themselves to another even if they didn't fit. They didn't care about jutting off at weird angles, and they didn't care about phone booths and Mary, Queen of Scots. They were motivated not by seamless and sensible matching, but by eyes, mouths, smiles, minds, breasts and chests and bottoms, wit, kindness, charm, romantic history and all sorts of other things that made straight edges impossible to achieve.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from Juliet, Naked
“Do you have any idea how mortifying this is?'
Her brothers stared at her, quite rightly, in Phillip's opinion, as if she'd gone mad.
'You lost the right,' Anthony bit off, 'to feel mortified, embarrassed, chagrined, or in fact any emotion other than blindingly stupid when you ran off without a word.”
― Julia Quinn, quote from To Sir Phillip, With Love
“Too bad Guy interrupted," I said as we snuck around the rear of the building. "Otherwise, I could have just walked you down here before you changed back."
His look said he wasn't dignifying that with a retort.
"I always wanted a dog," I said, nearly running to keep up with his long strides. "My brothers were both allergic. Have I told you that?"
"Once or twice."
"Maybe, someday, you could humor me and—
"Don't finish that sentence.”
― Kelley Armstrong, quote from Personal Demon
“They said the doctors could tell from the scars."
"Stop."
"Scars can tell you how old the wound is."
"Stop."
"When I stopped going to school, they came and found me. They found me in the closet."
"Sarah.”
― Amy Reed, quote from Beautiful
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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