“If you want to fall in love, you can't hold everything in. You have to open up, take that risk. You'll be hurt sometimes, but if you don't, you'll never be happy. The one you find may not be the kind of woman you expected to fall in love with, but it wont matter, you'll love her for exactly what she is.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“Ayla, I looked for you all my life and didn't know I was looking. You are everything I ever wanted, everything I ever dreamed of in a woman, and more. You are a fascinating enigma, a paradox. You are totally honest, open; you hide nothing: yet you are the most mysterious woman I've ever met.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“I don't know, Jondalar. Maybe you haven't found the right woman. Maybe the Mother has someone special for you. She doesn't make many like you. You are really more than most women could bear. If all your love were concentrated on one, it could overwhelm her, if she wasn't one to whom the Mother gave equal gifts.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“Sometimes women who aren’t perfect are more interesting; they’ve done more, or learned something.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“Ayla, what am I doing wrong?" he asked, standing in front of her, dripping. "It's not you. I'm the one who's doingit wrong." "You're not doing anything wrong." "Yes I am. I've been trying all day to encourage you, but you don't understand Clan gestures.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“You are strong, self-reliant, entirely able to take care of yourself and of me... You are fearless, courageous; you saved my life, nursed me back to health, hunted for my food, provided for my comfort. You don't need me. Yet you make me want to protect you, watch over you, make sure no harm comes to you. I could live with you all my life and never really know you; you have depths it would take many lifetimes to explore. You are wise and ancient... and as fresh and young as a woman as... And you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I love you more than life itself.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“Like men, some grow best in company, striving to outdo the rest. Others need to grow their own way, though it may be lonely. Both have value.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“Serenio had been right, his love was too much for most people to bear. His anger, let loose, could not be contained until it had run its course either. Growing up, he had once wreaked such havoc with righteous anger that he had caused someone serious injury. All his emotions were too powerful. Even his mother had felt forced to put a distance between them, and she had watched with silent sympathy when friends backed off because he clung too fiercely, loved too hard, demanded too much of them.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“Usually it will be something special or unusual. It may be a stone you have never seen before, or a root with a special shape that has meaning for you. You must learn to understand with your heart and mind, not your eyes and ears; then you will know. But, when the time comes and you find a sign your totem has left you, put it in your amulet. It will bring you luck.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“You need no call, you were born to this destiny. But you will be tested. You will cause pain and suffer for it …”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“If Earth’s children ever forget who provides for them, we may wake up someday and find we don’t have a home.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“En ocasiones las mujeres que no son perfectas resultan más interesantes; han hecho más o han aprendido algo.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“Tal vez creas que resulta más fácil seguir la corriente, porque así no tienes que luchar contra ella, pero ahí está el problema. Cuando vas contracorriente, tienes que estar pensando todo el tiempo en el río y la embarcación. Sabes que si te abandonas perderías todo lo que hayas ganado. Y puedes ver con tiempo lo que llegue, para evitarlo. Pero si sigues la corriente, es demasiado fácil dejarte llevar, permitir que tu mente vagabundee y que el río se adueñe de ti.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“Then, slowly, it filled her. An urge, like none she had ever known, rose out of her depths, grew in her throat, and burst from her mouth in a primal scream of victory. She did it! At that moment, in a lonely valley in the middle of a vast continent, somewhere near the undefined boundary of the desolate northern loess steppes and the wetter continental steppes to the south, a young woman stood with a bone club in her hand—and felt powerful. She could survive. She would survive.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“La carencia misma de responsabilidad le producía sentimientos contradictorios: una sensación inusitada de libertad al mismo tiempo que una frustración inexplicable.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“No podía obligarle a quedarse; sólo podía ayudarle a marcharse.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“Sorry. That is courtesy, right? Custom? Jondalar, what good are words like sorry? It doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t make me feel any better.” He pulled his hand through his hair. She was right. Whatever he had done—and he thought he knew what it was—being sorry didn’t help.”
― Jean M. Auel, quote from The Valley of Horses
“Some people have things written all over their faces; the big guy had a couple of words misspelled in crayon on his.”
― Jonathan Lethem, quote from Gun, With Occasional Music
“We Danes have always been charitable in our trading operations with Iceland. And when our deceased Highness monopolized trade with the island it was only in order to prevent outsiders from extorting those pitiable people.” As”
― Halldór Kiljan Laxness, quote from Iceland's Bell
“You remember the fairy tales you were told when you were very small - 'once upon a time...' Why do you think they always began like that?"
"Because they weren't true," Simon said promptly.
Jane said, caught up in the unreality of the high remote place, "Because perhaps they were true once, but nobody could remember them.”
― Susan Cooper, quote from Over Sea, Under Stone
“Being nearly four years old, she was certainly a child: and children are human (if one allows the term "human" a wide sense): but she had not altogether ceased to be a baby: and babies are of course not human--they are animals, and have a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes: the same in kind as these, but much more complicated and vivid, since babies are, after all, one of the most developed species of the lower vertebrates.
In short, babies have minds which work in terms and categories of their own which cannot be translated into the terms and categories of the human mind.
It is true that they look human--but not so human, to be quite fair, as many monkeys.
Subconsciously, too, every one recognizes they are animals--why else do people always laugh when a baby does some action resembling the human, as they would at a praying mantis? If the baby was only a less-developed man, there would be nothing funny in it, surely.”
― Richard Hughes, quote from A High Wind in Jamaica
“They say that faint heart never won fair lady. It is amazing to me how fair ladies are won, so faint are often men's hearts!”
― Anthony Trollope, quote from The Warden
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