Quotes from The Shell Seekers

Rosamunde Pilcher ·  530 pages

Rating: (82K votes)


“She believed, of course ... because without something to believe in, life would be intolerable.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“It was good, and nothing good is truly lost. It stays part of a person, becomes part of their character. So part of you goes everywhere with me. And part of me is yours, forever”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“She remembered him smiling, and realized that time, that great old healer, had finally accomplished its work, and now, across the years, the face of love no longer stirred up agonies of grief and bitterness. Rather, one was left feeling simply grateful. For how unimaginably empty the past would be without him to remember.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“Happiness is making the most of what you have, and riches is making the most of what you've got.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“It was good and nothing good is ever lost.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers



“Grief was like a terrible burden, but at least you could lay it down by the side of the road and walk away from it. Antonia had come only a few paces, but already she could turn and look back and not weep. It wasn't anything to do with forgetting. It was just accepting. Nothing was ever so bad once you had accepted it.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“She put out her hand and touched his forearm, as she would have touched some piece of porcelain or sculpture, just for the sheer animal pleasure of feeling its shape and curve beneath her fingertips.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“The greatest gift a parent can leave a child is that parent's own independence.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“What a happy woman I am, living in a garden, with books, babies, birds and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them. Sometimes I feel as if I were blest above all my fellows in being able to find happiness so easily."
(Quoted from Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim)”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“She had never lived alone before, and at first found it strange, but gradually had learned to accept it as a blessing and to indulge herself in all sorts of reprehensible ways, like getting up when she felt like it, scratching herself if she itched, sitting up until two in the morning to listen to a concert.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers



“She may not have believed in God, but I’m pretty certain God believed in her.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“Love she had found, had a strange way of multiplying. Doubling, trebling itself, so that, as each child arrived, there was always more than enough to go around.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“As long as Mumma was alive, she knew that some small part of herself had remained a child, cherished and adored. Perhaps you never completely grew up until your mother died.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“Time had lost its importance. That was one of the good things about getting old: you weren't perpetually in a hurry. All her life, Penelope had looked after other people, but now she had no one to think about but herself. There was time to stop and look, and, looking, to remember. Visions widened, like views seen from the slopes of a painfully climbed mountain, and having come so far, it seemed ridiculous not to pause and enjoy them.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“She had loved them all, her children. Loved each one the best, but for different reasons.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers



“Grief was like a terrible burden, but at least you could lay it down by the side of the road and walk away from it. Antonia had come only a few paces, but already she could turn and look back and not weep. It wasn’t anything to do with forgetting. It was just accepting. Nothing was ever so bad once you had accepted it.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“She looked up and saw, high in the sky beyond the racing black clouds, a ragged scrap of blue sky. Enough to make a cat a pair of trousers.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“The greatest gift a parent can leave a child is that parent’s own independence.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“Mrs. Plackett did not believe in letting emotion show. Keep yourself to yourself had always been her motto.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“[Describing an unsatisfactory apartment for which an up-and-comer had to settle:] The flat crouched around him, watching like a depressed relation, waiting for him to take some action.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers



“Living, now, had become not simple existence that one took for granted, but a bonus, a gift, with every day that lay ahead an experience to be savoured. Time did not last forever. I shall not waste a single moment, she promised herself. She had never felt so strong, so optimistic. As though she was young once more, starting out, and something marvellous was just about to happen.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“Oh well. Better out than in,”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“Man’s inhumanity to man, unleashed, was an obscenity, and that obscenity was each person’s own private responsibility.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“On the contrary, she was aware only of a sort of timelessness, as though it was all part of a plan, a predestined design, conceived the day she was born. What was happening to her had been meant to happen, what was going to go on happening. Without any recognizable beginning, it did not seem possible that it could ever have an end.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“And all at once it was as it had been before, on that gusty August day during the war, and she was twenty-three years old again, with holes in her sneakers, and Papa sitting beside her. And Richard walked in; into the gallery and into their lives. And Papa told him, "They will come...to paint the warmth of the sun and the colour of the wind." And that was how it had all begun.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers



“Nothing’s worth anything unless somebody wants it.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“And in this life, nothing good is truly lost. It stays part of a person, becomes part of their character.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“Which was strange, like watching a tangle of loose threads unravel and plait themselves into a single braided cord, stretching ahead into the future.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


“the memory of other laughter, and the unexpected ecstasies and physical joys that happen, perhaps, only once in any person’s lifetime. It was good. And nothing good is ever”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, quote from The Shell Seekers


About the author

Rosamunde Pilcher
Born place: in Lelant, Cornwall, England, The United Kingdom
Born date September 22, 1924
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