Mara > Mara's Quotes

“We read to know we're not alone.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands: A Play

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“You wake up one morning, those years are gone. There's a comfort in this fact perhaps. I want to think that there must be comfort in all facts we can't alter. ”
― Joyce Carol Oates, I Am No One You Know

“Everybody that went away suffered a broken heart. "I'm coming back some day," they all wrote. But never did. The old life was too small to fit anymore.”
― Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

“And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.”
― Annie Proulx, The Shipping News

“You could have all the crazy thoughts you wanted, as long as you smiled and kept them to yourself.”
― Mara Purnhagen, Past Midnight

“I wanted someone to gaze at me that way, someone to share a truly incredible moment with. I wondered how long I would have to wait.”
― Mara Purnhagen, Past Midnight

“I didn't avoid my problems. I just didn't feel as though I had to focus on them every minute of every day. And telling people about certain aspects of my life would only create trouble. If I was guilty of anything, it was of trying not to bring new problems into my life. That wasn't avoidance. That was logical thinking.”
― Mara Purnhagen, One Hundred Candles

“Who cares what other people think? Don't let the opinions of others define you.”
― Mara Purnhagen, Past Midnight

“I had learned how to leave a place behind without leaving a piece of myself along with it, but more important, I had taught myself how to be detached. I never joined teams or clubs, and I doubted my picture appeared in a single yearbook.

I was, in a way, a ghost: no one could prove I had ever existed once I physically left a location.”
― Mara Purnhagen, Past Midnight

“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things