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a town without a bookshop was a town without a heart.
What do you do, while you’re waiting for someone to die? Literally, sitting next to them in a plastic armchair that isn’t the right shape for anyone’s bottom, waiting for them to draw their last breath because there is no more hope.
All the diamonds in the world are nothing in comparison. Books are more precious than jewels.”
What did a diamond bring you? A momentary flash of brilliance. A diamond scintillated for a second; a book could scintillate forever.
“There are some people who leave a bigger hole than others,
“I wasn’t going to come,” she told him. “Because I didn’t want to fall in love with you and then have to get on a plane tomorrow.”
There was a limit, in certain situations, as to how many people’s sensibilities you could address.
How funny, he thought, for the first baby he’d ever held to be his own.
when you were shy and overweight and not very clever and terrible at sports, it turned out that no one was especially interested in you, even if you were sweet and kind and caring.
if you couldn’t keep your own secret, how on earth could you trust someone else to keep it?
He made her feel kittenish: soft and teasingly affectionate.
happy people don’t try to make other people feel bad.”
Brilliant musicians were brilliant because they practiced, not just because they had talent.
People were kind; people were loving. At least, the people her father had attracted were.
She felt slightly giddy with the risk. Perhaps it was better to focus on that than her grief, a little black bundle she opened only when she knew no one was around.
The one thing she was glad of was that at least Julius wasn’t married, so she was only causing potential harm to her own marriage, not her lover’s.
It was important for men to have an interest, and if that meant Ralph poring over the Racing Post at breakfast and trotting off to the races with his cronies, she didn’t mind—she liked the occasional trip to Cheltenham or Newbury herself if there was an exciting race or a horse they knew running.
They needed a strategy to stop him being tempted, ever again, and if that meant she had to police him, then so be it.
She was a good wife, and she wasn’t insecure enough to start looking for imperfections or ways in which she didn’t measure up. She bloody well did. It was Ralph who didn’t.
All those bloody acres, she thought, and no cash in the kitty.
Books, after all, were her escape from the horror she had been through. At night she could curl up with Ruth Rendell or Nancy Mitford, and the stress melted away, and for a couple of hours she could be somewhere else. Reading gave her comfort.
She lost herself somewhere among the shelves
Choosing the books was soothing her soul.
“I’m so sorry,” said Julius. “It’s been declined. It happens a lot at Christmas,” he added kindly.
suddenly, she felt as if she were six years old and the world had come crashing down around her because she’d smashed her piggy bank on the kitchen floor.
“Honestly, sometimes I feel like a priest in here. People tell me all sorts of extraordinary things. I could write a book. But I’m too busy selling them.”
she stayed nearly an hour and chatted, because the great thing was you could stay in a bookshop talking about books for as long as you liked and nobody thought it strange.
There’s a book for everyone, even if they don’t think there is. A book that reaches in and grabs your soul.”
They had always given each other scarves at Christmas. After all, no one ever questioned a new scarf the way they might a piece of jewelry, yet they were pleasingly intimate.
wanted to pull the girl into her arms, tell her how proud Julius would have been of her, how his eyes always shone when he spoke about her, how very much she was loved.
“She’s all smoke and mirrors. She’s got no personality—any fool can see that.”
“I don’t suppose he minds about personality when her legs are wrapped round his head.”
She had suppressed her emotions so ferociously she thought she might never feel anything ever again.
Alice was a little sunbeam who loved everybody, saw the bad in no one, and treated everyone the same.
He couldn’t believe the stars were there, twinkling happily. How was it possible, when Alice lay there so still and small?
I don’t want you here when I don’t know you are there. I don’t want you to watch me die. I want to say good-bye to you while I am still me. A pretty ropy version of me.”
She stroked his cheek. She loved every bone in his poor failing body.
“You’re the love of my life,” she told him. “I’ll save you a place. Wherever I’m going,” he said back. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
She had wanted to climb into his bed and hold him forever. To die with him, if that were possible. Drift off into that final never-ending sleep with him in her arms.
nothing like a good browse in a bookshop to broaden your horizons.
From the outside, she was living the dream. Inside, she felt bored and empty and meaningless. How on earth had she thought that full-time motherhood was going to be enough for her?
That was the whole point of Nightingale Books. It cast a spell over its customers by introducing them to the magic.
In Ireland, she’d never known rain like it. It was there all the time. Yet it was soft. It was like having your skin kissed endlessly.
For heaven’s sake, she told herself. You’re not a skinny little wannabe actress anymore, and he’s an old man. Get over yourself.
There’s nothing women find more attractive than a single man in charge of a baby.
She smiled at him, and he wanted to scoop her up in his arms because she was so brave, sitting there with her face all battered, thinking she was lucky.
“It just goes to show you,” said Sarah, “that you can think you know someone, but you have no idea.”
she knew, from all the books she had ever read, that life was complicated, that love sprang from nowhere sometimes, and that forbidden love wasn’t always something to be ashamed of.
That’s the trouble with books. You can never choose your favorite. It changes depending on your mood.
To him, it wouldn’t matter if her whole face were scarred: she was beautiful.
