Eileen > Eileen's Quotes

“You are unreliable, Flavia,' he said. 'Utterly unreliable.'
Of course I was! It was one of the things I loved most about myself.”
― Alan Bradley, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

“I gave her a partial smile and kept the rest of it for myself...”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“It is not unknown for fathers with a brace of daughters to reel off their names in order of birth when summoning the youngest, and I had long ago become accustomed to being called 'Ophelia Daphne Flavia, damn it.”
― Alan Bradley, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

“The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had been doing so for a long time.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“I miss her all the time. I know in my head that she has gone. The only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It's like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it's there and keep falling in. After a while, it's still there, but you learn to walk round it.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“If we don't go mad once in a while, there's no hope.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“Harold could no longer pass a stranger without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also unique; and that this was the dilemma of being human.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“You got up, and you did something. And if trying to find a way when you don't even know you can get there isn't a small miracle; then I don't know what is.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“. . . when it comes down to it, that’s what life is all about: showing up for the people you love, again and again, until you can’t show up anymore.”
― Rebecca Walker, Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence

“People were buying milk, or filling their cars with petrol, or even posting letters. And what no one else knew was the appalling weight of the thing they were carrying inside. The superhuman effort it took sometimes to be normal, and a part of things that appeared both easy and everyday. The loneliness of that.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“Beginnings could happen more than once, or in different ways.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“He understood that in walking to atone for the mistakes he had made, it was also his journey to accept the strangeness of others.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“After the two drinks, she felt warm inside, and slightly indistinct at the edges.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“It was not a life, if lived without love.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“The words you can't find, you borrow.
We read to know we're not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“He must have driven this way countless times, and yet he had no memory of the scenery. He must have been so caught up in the day's agenda, and arriving punctually at their destination, that the land beyond the car had been no more than a wash of one green, and a backdrop of one hill. Life was very different when you walked through it.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“He wished the man would honor the true meaning of words, instead of using them as ammunition.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“you could be ordinary and attempt something extraordinary, without being able to explain it in a logical way.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“His shirt, tie, and trousers were folded small as an apology on a faded blue-velvet chair.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“Sometimes her words sliced down on his before they had even reached his mouth.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

“Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength.”
― Thomas Pynchon

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
― Anais Nin

“I’ve read that one out of twenty-four people is a sociopath, and if you ask me, the other twenty-three of you should be worried.”
― Lisa Scottoline, Every Fifteen Minutes

“Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

“Every life has death and every light has shadow. Be content to stand in the light and let the shadow fall where it will.”
― Mary Stewart, The Hollow Hills

“It is not true that women cannot keep secrets. Where they love, they can be trusted to death and beyond, against all sense and reason. It is their weakness, and their great strength. ”
― Mary Stewart, The Hollow Hills

“We are not quite novels.
We are not quite short stories.
In the end, we are collected works.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“It is the secret fear that we are unlovable that isolates us,” the passage goes, “but it is only because we are isolated that we think we are unlovable. Someday, you do not know when, you will be driving down a road. And someday, you do not know when, he, or indeed she, will be there. You will be loved because for the first time in your life, you will truly not be alone. You will have chosen to not be alone.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“Someday, you may think of marrying. Pick someone who thinks you're the only person in the room.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry