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The best things that happened to you in life were often a complete surprise.
Some people are who you think they are. Some people hide the wolf inside of them, but you can hear them howl.
It was the pain that drove her deep inside herself. That and the idea that each day was a gift, and soon enough she would be gone.
“My dear girl, you gave me back a hundred times more than anything I would ever want,” Constance told her. “We were a family. What could be better than that?”
“Real life is unbelievable. Souls are snatched away from us, flesh and blood turn to dust, people you love betray you, men go to war over nothing. It’s all preposterous. That’s why we have novels. To make sense of things.”
Hawthorne seemed a different person in the summer months. It was in the forests where he found his inspiration, and his true appreciation of solitude grew stronger. I lived in Maine like a bird of the air, he later remembered, so perfect was the freedom I enjoyed.
“It’s not the words alone that will make your work great, it’s your empathy,” Elizabeth told him. “You feel what others do and see what others might. You are your characters, and they are you, whether they be men or women, young or old. This is more than a talent—it’s a gift.”
Worse than never having had something was to have had it and then have it taken away.
“Is it possible that we dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep?”
for even though Nathaniel was thirty-three, a man in every way, to Robert he would always be that boy who loved to visit his uncles in Maine, where he had freedom to wander through the woods and swim in every pond he came to.
He knew that all things begin with kindness and that all hope began with trust.
That was how mysterious the world was; standing alone in a river could make you feel as if you were the only person on earth, and nearly come to believe it, and wish for the company of those you loved best.
Love, whether newly born or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.
People in love were such fools, they made up excuses, they wound up doing as they pleased no matter how much good advice they’d been given.
one who’d thought his only purpose was to tell stories, when it now became clear that it was far more important for him to have the ability to love someone.
Life can be long or short, it is impossible to know, but every once in a while an entire life is spent in one night, the night when the windows are open and you can hear the last of the crickets’ call, when there is a chill in the air and the stars are bright, when nothing else matters, when a single kiss lasts longer than a lifetime, when you do not think about the future or the past, or whether or not you are walking through a dream rather than the real world, when everything you have always wanted and everything you are fated to mourn forever are tied together with black thread and then
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they should had left the past behind. If you hold on to it, it will only haunt you, it will wrap its arms around you and pull you down.
You had to lose something to gain something. It was the reason why so many people stayed, long after they knew they should leave.
The last time of everything was painful, no matter how beautiful it might be.
Love once, and you can love again. Open your heart, open your eyes, be grateful for what you’ve had. Nothing was promised in this world, nothing lasted, yet what truly mattered always remained. What was eternal could not be captured, yet it flickered in the dark there beside you, the memory of all that had been.
Once upon a time, she would tell her daughter, I loved you more than anything. I loved you more than life itself. I loved you enough to find whatever awaits us, no matter what it might be, no matter where. We can go as far as we need to, even if it’s west of the moon. Sometimes walking away is the bravest thing you can do. When you get there, you’ll know where you are.
