There is the outside of a story, and there is the inside of a story, he told me as we sat in his library one afternoon. One is the fruit and may be delicious, but the other is the seed.
He is gone and all we have is this world, here and now.
That was how evil spoke. It made its own corrupt sense; it swore that the good were evil, and that evil had come to save mankind.
If a woman is in trouble, she should always wear blue for protection.
If she wanted to enter an otherworld, all she had to do was open a novel.
Love more, her aunt had said. Not less.
If we had no hurt and no sin to speak of, we’d be angels, and amgels can’t love the way men and women do.
I didn’t understand that when I closed myself to her, I took a part of her bitterness inside me. It was green and unforgiving, and as it grew it made me more like her. It gave me my strength, but it gave me my weakness as well.
Every woman is only one bad boyfriend or one bad choice away from the street. And she’s only one good choice back to the path that will lead her home.
But when it comes to most skills, failure is the only way to become better at something. Knitting teaches you that. You may have to unwind all of your stitches and start anew. That doesn’t mean you’ve wasted your time. You learn from every stitch, even those that don’t amount to anything. All writers should be made to knit a hat before they start writing a novel. It would help with understanding the importance of revision, and that the process is what can bring you the most.
Goodness, in their opinion, was not a virtue but merely spinelessness and fear disguised as humility.
Butter melting on a dish meant someone nearby was in love, and a bird in the house take your bad luck out the window.
She thought she could have what she wanted; she thought she could see the world from above, as if it were a distant blue ball whose sorrows had nothing to do with her. She had wanted to be a bird, but now she knew, as she looked out the window to see Lewis following, that even birds are chained to earth by their needs and desires.
My expectations of what I wanted in a man I learned from a dog: loyalty and kindness.
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.
When Juliet came flying down the hallway, Stella didn’t recognize her friend. Juliet hadn’t bothered with makeup; she was wearing a nightgown underneath her raincoat and had on plastic flip-flops. This was the way loved walked in, barely dressed, confused, panic-stricken, overcome, not caring what anyone thought or what they believed.
It was a miracle to live as birds do, except for one thing: anyone seen in flight would surely be captured, perhaps even shot down like a crow flying above a cornfield. It’s always dangerous to be different, to appear as a monster in most people’s eyes, even from a distance.
You can get addicted to trouble if you’re not careful.
She had the feeling that if she went home, she might never get away. She thought of birds caught in nets. There was something inside her, beating against her ribs, urging her to do things she might not otherwise attempt. She had the strongest desire to get lost.
Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.