Eileen V > Eileen's Quotes

“Sometimes you just have to regret things and move on.”
― Charlaine Harris

“Don’t you just hate nights like that, when you think over every mistake you’ve made, every hurt you’ve received, every bit of meanness you’ve dealt out? There’s no profit in it, no point to it, and you need sleep.”
― Charlaine Harris, Dead and Gone

“Today was going to be a hard day, and I always felt better when I was dressed while handling a crisis. Something about putting on my underwear makes me feel more capable.”
― Charlaine Harris, Dead and Gone

“It’s probably true that solitude can enhance your eccentricities, but it’s also true that since there’s no one around to point them out to you, those eccentricities can soon become a comfortable part of your personality, leading you into a contentment born solely of not giving a damn.”
― Pamela Terry, The Sweet Taste of Muscadines

“The past often rides on the notes of a song, and as this one wove its way around the car and out into the open air, it carried with it all the carefree vacations we’d taken to our favorite Florida beach before the loss of our father changed everything.”
― Pamela Terry, The Sweet Taste of Muscadines

“I’ve been treating you with courtesy and respect because that’s the way I choose to treat everyone. But never, ever mistake kindness for weakness.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Homes, Gamache knew, were a self-portrait. A person’s choice of color, furnishing, pictures. Every touch revealed the individual. God, or the Devil, was in the details. And so was the human. Was it dirty, messy, obsessively clean? Were the decorations chosen to impress, or were they a hodgepodge of personal history? Was the space cluttered or clear? He felt a thrill every time he entered a home during an investigation.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“His theory is that life is loss,’ said Myrna after a moment. ‘Loss of parents, loss of loves, loss of jobs. So we have to find a higher meaning in our lives than these things and people. Otherwise we’ll lose ourselves.’ ‘What do you think of that?’ ‘I think he’s right. I was a psychologist in Montreal before coming here a few years ago. Most of the people came through my door because of a crisis in their lives, and most of those crises boiled down to loss. Loss of a marriage or an important relationship. Loss of security. A job, a home, a parent. Something drove them to ask for help and to look deep inside themselves. And the catalyst was often change and loss.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“I think Brother Albert hit it on the head. Life is loss. But out of that, as the book stresses, comes freedom. If we can accept that nothing is permanent, and change is inevitable, if we can adapt, then we’re going to be happier people.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Life is change. If you aren’t growing and evolving you’re standing still, and the rest of the world is surging ahead. Most of these people are very immature. They lead “still” lives, waiting.’ ‘Waiting for what?’ ‘Waiting for someone to save them. Expecting someone to save them or at least protect them from the big, bad world. The thing is no one else can save them because the problem is theirs and so is the solution. Only they can get out of it.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“The fault lies with us, and only us. It’s not fate, not genetics, not bad luck, and it’s definitely not Mom and Dad. Ultimately it’s us and our choices. But, but’ – now her eyes shone and she almost vibrated with excitement – ‘the most powerful, spectacular thing is that the solution rests with us as well. We’re the only ones who can change our lives, turn them around. So all those years waiting for someone else to do it are wasted. I used to love talking about this with Timmer. Now there was a bright woman. I miss her.’ Myrna threw herself back in her chair. ‘The vast majority of troubled people don’t get it. The fault is here, but so is the solution. That’s the grace.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“I think many people love their problems. Gives them all sorts of excuses for not growing up and getting on with life.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“Gamache had remembered an analogy someone told him years ago. Living our lives was like living in a long house. We entered as babies at one end, and we exited when our time came. And in between we moved through this one, great, long room. Everyone we ever met, and every thought and action lived in that room with us. Until we made peace with the less agreeable parts of our past they’d continue to heckle us from way down the long house. And sometimes the really loud, obnoxious ones told us what to do, directing our actions even years later.”
― Louise Penny, Still Life

“But some people are too alive to fully die, their stories too big to disappear, and he was one of them. I see traces of him all over our magic house. I hear him in the creak and groan of the floorboards as the summer nights stretch them, can visualize him sitting at the foot of my bed, saying, Other houses have support beams and foundations. Ours has bones and a heartbeat.”
― Emily Henry, A Million Junes

“Grief is an unfillable hole in your body. It should be weightless, but it's heavy. Should be cold, but it burns. Should, over time, close up, but instead it deepens.”
― Emily Henry, A Million Junes

“There is no dedication in this book because the entire book is dedicated to you: the reader. To all readers. Because this book is about reading and books, and how these things can change your life, always, I would argue, for the better. It’s also about what it feels like to move and start over (something I’ve done quite a lot in my life), and the effect that where we choose to live has on how we feel; and can falling in love in real life be like falling in love in stories, and also there’s some stuff about cheese, because I have just moved somewhere they make lots of cheese and I can’t stop eating it. And a dog called Parsley.”
― Jenny Colgan, The Bookshop on the Corner