"That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with. "
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"I think you learn more if you're laughing at the same time."
— Mary Ann Shaffer

"Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person's name suddenly pops up everywhere you go? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Mr. Simpless, my parson friend, calls it Grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and "fruitfulness" is drawn in. "
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Because there is nothing I would rather do than rummage through bookshops, I went at once to Hastings & Sons Bookshop upon receiving your letter. I have gone to them for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadn't known I wanted."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"We read books, talked books, argued over books and became dearer and dearer to one another."
— Mary Ann Shaffer

"She is one of those ladies who is more beautiful at sixty than she could possibly have been at twenty. (how I hope someone says that about me someday)! "
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"It was amazing to me then, and still is, that so many people who wander into bookshops don't really know what they're after--they only want to look around and hope to see a book that will strike their fancy. And then, being bright enough not to trust the publisher's blurb, they will ask the book clerk the three questions: (1) What is it about? (2) Have you read it? (3) Was it any good?"
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with. "
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

". . . I much prefer whining to counting my blessings."
— Mary Ann Shaffer

"I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers-- booksellers really are a special breed. No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no one in his right mind would want to own one-- the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and readin that makes them do it-- along with first dibs on the new books."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

""Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"I sometimes think I prefer suitors in books rather than right in front of me. How awful, backward, cowardly, and mentally warped that will be if it turns out to be true."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Isola doesn't approve of small talk and believes in breaking the ice by stomping on it."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Your questions regarding that gentleman are very delicate, very subtle, very much like being smacked in the head with a mallet...it's a tuba among the flutes."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Then i imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again. "
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"I, too, have felt that the war goes on and on. When my son, Ian, died at El Alamein-- side by side with... visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said, "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and nexe year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it. "
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"I think you learn more if you're laughing at the same time."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Night-time train travel is wonderful again! No standing in the corridors for hours, no being shunted off for a troop train to pass, and above all, no black-out curtains. All the windows we passed were lighted, and I could snoop once more. I missed it so terribly during the war. I felt as if we had all turned into moles scuttling along in our separate tunnels. I don't consider myself a real peeper-they go in for bedrooms, but it's families in sitting rooms or kitchens that thrill me. I can imagine their entire lives from a glimpse of bookshelves, or desks, or lit candles, or bright sofa cushions."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"I am to cover the philosophical side of the debate and so far my only thought is that reading keeps you from going gaga."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Miss X has always been a ditherer -- she was a ten month baby and has not improved in any material way since then."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Treat a dog right and he'll treat you right. ... Cats is different, but I never held it against them."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"If there is Predestination, then God is the devil.
by Remy, Ravensbruck concentration camp survivor"
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

""Because there is nothing I would rather do than rummage through bookstores, I went at once to Hastings & Sons Bookshop upon receiving your letter. I have gone to them for years, always finding the one book I wanted--and then three more I hadn't known I wanted." "
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

""...what is the matter with me? Am I too particular? I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.""
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"In a good mood I call my hair Chestnut with Gold Glints. In a bad mood, I call it mousy brown"
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive--all with no end in sight, and for no reason other than pure enjoyment."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Isn't that something-to know your own soul by hearsay, instead of its own tidings? Why should I let a preacher tell me if I had one or not? If I could believe I hada soul, all by myself, then I could listen to its tidings all by myself."
— Mary Ann Shaffer

""Grandpa, that's something I never am." I asked him, "What's that?" And he said, "Lonesome in my spirits." Eli to Eben"
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Moses: God or crowd control?!?"
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"My friend Mrs. Maugery bought a pamphlet that once belonged to you, too. It is called 'Was There a Burning Bush? A Defense of Moses and the Ten Commandments'. She liked your margin note, “Word of God or crowd control???” Did you ever decide which?"
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"one year as his wife, and id have become one of those abject, quaking women who look at their husbands when someone asks them a question. I've always despised that type, but I see how it happens now"
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"People don't know how chickens can turn on you, but they can -- just like mad dogs."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no one in his right mind would want to own one - the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it - along withfirst dibs on the new books. "
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

""Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.""
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person's name suddenly pops up everywhere you go? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Mr. Simpless, my parson friend, calls it Grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and "fruitfulness" is drawn in."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"She gathered a circle of children around her and commenced singing 'For Those Who Peril on the Sea' over their little heads. But no, 'safety from storms' wasn't enough for her. God had to keep them from being blown up too. She set about ordering the poor things to pray for their parents every night- who knew what the German soldiers might do to them? Then she said to be especially good little boys and girls so Mama and Daddy could look down on them from heaven and BE PROUD OF THEM...she had those children crying and sobbing fit to die.
I was too shocked to move, but no, not Elizabeth. No, quick as an adder's tongue, she had ahold of Adelaide's arm and told her to SHUT UP.
'Let me go!' Adelaide cried. 'I am speaking the Word of God!'
Elizabeth, she got a look on her that would turn the devil to stone, and then she slapped Adelaide right across the face!"
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"His writings have made me his friend."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. "
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny think will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive -- all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books."
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)