But do you really want to spend your life like this, as if you’re locked in a library?” “Of course.” Alba grins. “I can’t think of anything better.
I don’t think tea will quite do, we need something a little more fortifying on such an auspicious occasion. Hot chocolate with fresh cream, that’s the thing.
There’s as much chance of me leaving this kitchen,” Stella says, “as you putting down a book.
It’s a great shame, she thinks, that the heart cannot feel joy without also feeling pain, that it cannot know love without also knowing loss.
If you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be dead,” Stella says. “And, as a life strategy, I don’t really recommend it.
Most people think this world we live in is mundane, but you remind us that it’s magical. You wrap reality in the wonder and joy of fiction, until it infuses us and becomes true.
You’re one of life’s magicians. You simply haven’t realized it yet.
We all have to make choices,” Joan said. “Since we can’t have two lives, only one. But, most of those choices we make fresh every day, not just once. So, if you regret something, if you want to change your mind, you usually can.
It’s always best to feel fulfilled first, before finding a man. Then you’ll know the value of yourself, and you’ll hold the key to your own happiness. So you won’t turn into a vulnerable, needy, emotional mess the minute you fall in love.
The only way to stop hurting other people is to stop hurting yourself.
When you follow your heart you allow miraculous possibilities to unfold.
That is the first, and most important, reason you don’t yet have the life you want,’ Rose explained. ‘Because truly, deep down, you don’t believe you deserve it. You think you’re not good enough.’ Maya swallowed back her tears. ‘Try saying it,’ Rose suggested. ‘Try saying that you deserve to have everything you want.’ Maya opened her mouth. Words formed and hovered on her tongue, waiting for her to speak. But she couldn’t.
I can’t trust anyone who won’t take real cream, or real sugar.
And, like most people, you’re too scared, stubborn or stupid to give yourself what you need until you’re shaken awake by something.
When a woman needs courage, for example, life might throw a few things at her to draw it out. When a woman needs to love herself, she might be lonely while life leaves her without external hearts to hide in.
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of writers who have minded the opinions of others.
You can’t say you’ve failed to achieve something until you die,’ Bill said. ‘Or until you’ve tried absolutely everything; and you haven’t really tried everything until you’re dead. So you might have given up, but you certainly haven’t failed.
And when people stop focusing on their dreams they become lost in the maze of their minds, wandering around in endlessly repeating circles. Then the colours of life start to dull, and excitement starts to die. Until you’re trapped in a prison of your own making, looking out at life instead of living it.
Now you’re discovering the great secret of great writing: one line of true feeling is worth a thousand pages of clever thinking.
Scarlet often wondered about how it might feel to be loved for no special reason at all. Without trying to twist yourself into agreeable knots, without having to give what you might not want to give, safe in the knowledge that you were loved for just being your simple self.