Hannah > Hannah's Quotes

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Immaturity

“Of course it's alright for librarians to smell of drink.”
― Barbara Pym, Less Than Angels

“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

“She could not explain in so many words, but she felt that those who prepare for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.”
― E. M. Forster, Howard's End

“We are reverting to the civilization of luggage, and historians of the future will note how the middle classes accreted possessions without taking root in the earth, and may find in this the secret of their imaginative poverty.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“People are my home, the ones I love.” Eleanor”
― Kate Morton, The Lake House

“There was a strong but not unpleasant smell- moist earth, decomposing leaf matter, new flowers beginning to catch the day's sun- and great fat bumblebees were busy already collecting pollen from a profusion of small pink and white blooms. Blackberries: Sadie surprised herself by dredging up the knowledge. They were blackberry flowers, and in a few months' time the bushes would be heavy with fruit.”
― Kate Morton, The Lake House

“They'd eaten every meal outdoors, hard-boiled eggs and cheese from a picnic basket, and drunk wine under the lilac tree in the walled garden. They'd disappeared inside the woods, and stolen apples from the farm next door, and floated down the stream in her little boat as one silken hour spun itself into the next. On a clear, still night, they'd dug the old bicycles out of the shed and cycled together along the dusty lane, racing, laughing, breathing in salt from the warm air as moonlight made the stones, still hot from the day, shine lustrous white.”
― Kate Morton, The Lake House

“A tangle of star jasmine spilled across the path and Alice knelt to pluck a sprig, holding it beneath her nose and breathing in the scent of captured sunshine. On a whim, she unlaced her shoes. A delicate iron chair stood in a nook beside the camellia, and she sat, slipping her feet free and peeling off her socks, wiggling her toes in the surprise of the balmy air. A late butterfly hovered at a nearby rosebush, and Alice thought, as always, of her father.”
― Kate Morton, The Lake House

“The hours between eight in the evening and one or two in the morning have always been my magic hours. Against the blue candlewick bedspread the white pages of my open book, illuminated by a circle of lamplight, were the gateway to another world.”
― Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“Then I've been drunk, too," admitted Francie.

"On beer?"

"No. Last spring, in McCarren's Park, I saw a tulip for the first time in my life.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“And she doesn’t have to worry about me, either. I don’t need to drink to get drunk. I can get drunk on things like the tulip—and this night.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“I was not unsympathetic with John's mood, but I did hope he was not about to transfer his affections from Charity to the mummy. Charity had not encouraged him, but there can be no more unresponsive recipient of love than a woman who has been dead for seventeen hundred years, give or take a century.”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Mummy Case

“First kisses didn’t necessarily require darkness and alcohol, they could happen in the open air, with the sun warm on your face and everything around you honest and real and true.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“Ed was meant to be on kid duty while she hosted the book club. He'd read the book, but he didn't want to join the club. He said the idea of book clubs brought back horrible memories of pretentious classmates in English Lit. 'If anyone uses the phrases "marvelous imagery" or "narrative arc", slap them for me,' he'd said.”
― Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies

“You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.”
― John Adams, The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

“You made it; your get to put it out there. Never apologize for it, never explain it away, never be ashamed of it. You did your best with what you knew, and you worked with what you had, in the time that you were given.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear