Emily Climbs

by L.M. Montgomery

You make God ugly—and He’s beautiful. I hate you for making God ugly, you fat little man.

It is quite conceivable and not totally reprehensible that the next thing that happened might have been a kiss. Emily thought Teddy was going to kiss her: Teddy knew he was: and the odds are that he wouldn’t have had his face slapped as Geoff North had had.

I’ll write it all down—all but Teddy’s saying I was the sweetest girl in the world. That’s too—dear—to write. I’ll—just—remember it.”

Well, it all comes to this, there’s no use trying to live in other people’s opinions. The only thing to do is to live in your own.

“It might be a nice world if nobody ever said a disagreeable thing, but it would be a dangerous one,”

Remember that I am only Emily’s biographer, not her apologist.

The discovery of beautiful and interesting words always gives me joy. When I find a new, charming word I exult as a jewel-seeker and am unhappy until I’ve set it in a sentence.

“Well, one must be a slave to something in this kind of a world,” he said. “No one is free. Perhaps, after all, O daughter of the Stars, love is the easiest master—easier than hate—or fear—or necessity—or ambition—or pride.

I read a story tonight. It ended unhappily. I was wretched until I had invented a happy ending for it. I shall always end my stories happily. I don’t care whether it’s “true to life” or not. It’s true to life as it should be and that’s a better truth than the other.