The Little Shop of Grand Curiosities (Tales from the Faraway North, #1)

by Iris Lake

She had a relentless yearning for all things magical and a miraculous ability to find beauty in the most unlikely places—and the most undeserving of people.

Reading is such a self-reflective practice that you both find and lose yourself at once.”

The ones that were evidence of a life well and fully lived. Nostalgia, gratitude, awe, a lovely sort of melancholia while gazing at a sunset, the sky bleeding and my eyes starving for its death.

There was something so unlovely about love. More often than it should, it was painfully unequal.

If you always try to force people into seeing the world the way you do, you will never love anybody. You will only love the pieces of yourself you find in others.”

mistake is just another word for fate.

It was impossible to choose to be one person when life was so interesting and intricate.

There were so many people I wanted to be and so many lives I wanted to live.

“Life is too short not to dress like a princess at every given opportunity.”

roasted potatoes, salt-baked sea bass with warm tomato vinaigrette, and herb-buttered vegetables—before

I want to make this dinner, it sounds delicious

To be known for all you were was lovely. But to be known for all the things you could be was extraordinary.