Joslyn > Joslyn's Quotes

“Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no owner. Every book you see here has been somebody’s best friend.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“Never trust people who don't have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Loneliness is an invisible ailment.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“You never have the sort of friends you have when you’re fifteen ever again. Even if you keep them for the rest of your life, it’s never the same as it was then.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“I get crazy in a bookstore. It makes my heart beat hard because I want to buy everything.”
― Reese Witherspoon

“When you finally accept that you're a complete dork, your life gets easier. No sense in trying to be cool.”
― Reese Witherspoon

“In silence lies safety.”
― Luke Jennings, Codename Villanelle: short story

“As they say in the theater, suspend your disbelief. Otherwise, the reality of this world is very much like yours and mine.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“The stories that are familiar will always be our favorites.”
― Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

“I understood the metrics by which one's social sphere was enlarged by theater.”
― Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

“Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives--or to find strength in a very long one.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Getting dumped is never really about getting dumped.'
'What is it about, then?' I ask.
'It's about every rejection you've ever experienced in your entire life. It's about the kids at school who called you names. And the parent who never came back. And the girls who wouldn't dance with you at the disco. And the school girlfriend who wanted to be single when she went to uni. And any criticism at work. When someone says they don't want to be with you, you feel the pain of every single one of those times in life where you felt like you weren't good enough. You live through all of it again.'
'I don't know how to get over it, Mum,' I say. 'At this point I'm so tired of myself. I don't know how to let go of her.'
'You don't let go once. That's your first mistake. You say goodbye over a lifetime. You might not have thought about her for ten years, then you'll hear a song or you'll walk past somewhere you once went together - something will come to the surface that you'd totally forgotten about. And you say another goodbye. You have to be prepared to let go and let go and let go a thousand times.'
'Does it get easier?'
'Much,' she says.”
― Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“Be alone, Jen. You know how to be alone without being lonely. Do you know how rare that is? Do you know how much I wish I could do that? It’s a wonderful thing you’ve got going on there.”
― Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“...relationships are challenging and boring and annoying, and that’s unavoidable. You have to work through it, you can’t just opt out of the whole thing”
― Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“Life is a bit more difficult for women. More difficult than it is for us, I mean. And you don't need to ask them to explain why or understand it all. You just need to be nice to them.”
― Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“Poetry is the most reviled and redundant art form, everyone rolls their eyes at it and takes the piss out of it. But the second that something shit happens in our lives, it’s the first recourse we have. Halfway through my second listen, I get what I want.”
― Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“Rea­sons Why I Loved Be­ing With Jen

I love what a good friend you are. You’re re­ally en­gaged with the lives of the peo­ple you love. You or­ga­nize lovely ex­pe­ri­ences for them. You make an ef­fort with them, you’re pa­tient with them, even when they’re side­tracked by their chil­dren and can’t pri­or­i­tize you in the way you pri­or­i­tize them.

You’ve got a gen­er­ous heart and it ex­tends to peo­ple you’ve never even met, whereas I think that ev­ery­one is out to get me. I used to say you were naive, but re­ally I was jeal­ous that you al­ways thought the best of peo­ple.

You are a bit too anx­ious about be­ing seen to be a good per­son and you def­i­nitely go a bit over­board with your left-wing pol­i­tics to prove a point to ev­ery­one. But I know you re­ally do care. I know you’d sign pe­ti­tions and help peo­ple in need and vol­un­teer at the home­less shel­ter at Christ­mas even if no one knew about it. And that’s more than can be said for a lot of us.

I love how quickly you read books and how ab­sorbed you get in a good story. I love watch­ing you lie on the sofa read­ing one from cover-to-cover. It’s like I’m in the room with you but you’re in a whole other gal­axy.

I love that you’re al­ways try­ing to im­prove your­self. Whether it’s running marathons or set­ting your­self chal­lenges on an app to learn French or the fact you go to ther­apy ev­ery week. You work hard to be­come a bet­ter ver­sion of your­self. I think I prob­a­bly didn’t make my ad­mi­ra­tion for this known and in­stead it came off as ir­ri­ta­tion, which I don’t re­ally feel at all.

I love how ded­i­cated you are to your fam­ily, even when they’re an­noy­ing you. Your loy­alty to them wound me up some­times, but it’s only be­cause I wish I came from a big fam­ily.

I love that you al­ways know what to say in con­ver­sa­tion. You ask the right ques­tions and you know ex­actly when to talk and when to lis­ten. Ev­ery­one loves talk­ing to you be­cause you make ev­ery­one feel im­por­tant.

I love your style. I know you think I prob­a­bly never no­ticed what you were wear­ing or how you did your hair, but I loved see­ing how you get ready, sit­ting in front of the full-length mir­ror in our bed­room while you did your make-up, even though there was a mir­ror on the dress­ing ta­ble.

I love that you’re mad enough to swim in the English sea in No­vem­ber and that you’d pick up spi­ders in the bath with your bare hands. You’re brave in a way that I’m not.

I love how free you are. You’re a very free per­son, and I never gave you the sat­is­fac­tion of say­ing it, which I should have done. No one knows it about you be­cause of your bor­ing, high-pres­sure job and your stuffy up­bring­ing, but I know what an ad­ven­turer you are un­der­neath all that.

I love that you got drunk at Jack­son’s chris­ten­ing and you al­ways wanted to have one more drink at the pub and you never com­plained about get­ting up early to go to work with a hang­over. Other than Avi, you are the per­son I’ve had the most fun with in my life.

And even though I gave you a hard time for al­ways try­ing to for al­ways try­ing to im­press your dad, I ac­tu­ally found it very adorable be­cause it made me see the child in you and the teenager in you, and if I could time-travel to any­where in his­tory, I swear, Jen, the only place I’d want to go is to the house where you grew up and hug you and tell you how beau­ti­ful and clever and funny you are. That you are spec­tac­u­lar even with­out all your sports trophies and mu­sic cer­tifi­cates and in­cred­i­ble grades and Ox­ford ac­cep­tance.

I’m sorry that I loved you so much more than I liked my­self, that must have been a lot to carry. I’m sorry I didn’t take care of you the way you took care of me. And I’m sorry I didn’t take care of my­self, ei­ther. I need to work on it. I’m pleased that our break-up taught me that. I’m sorry I went so mental.

I love you. I always will. I'm glad we met.”
― Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“I love how quickly you read books and how absorbed you get in a good story. I love watching you lie on the sofa reading one from cover-to-cover. It’s like I’m in the room with you but you’re in a whole other galaxy”
― Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“She was the first close friend who I felt like I’d re­ally cho­sen. We weren’t in each other’s lives be­cause of any obli­ga­tion to the past or con­ve­nience of the present. We had no shared his­tory and we had no rea­son to spend all our time to­ gether. But we did. Our friend­ship in­ten­si­fied as all our friends had chil­dren – she, like me, was un­con­vinced about hav­ing kids. And she, like me, found her­self in a re­la­tion­ship in her early thir­ties where they weren’t specif­i­cally work­ing to­wards start­ing a fam­ily.

By the time I was thirty-four, Sarah was my only good friend who hadn’t had a baby. Ev­ery time there was an­other preg­nancy an­nounce­ment from a friend, I’d just text the words ‘And an­other one!’ and she’d know what I meant.

She be­came the per­son I spent most of my free time with other than Andy, be­cause she was the only friend who had any free time. She could meet me for a drink with­out plan­ning it a month in ad­vance. Our friend­ship made me feel lib­er­ated as well as safe. I looked at her life choices with no sym­pa­thy or con­cern for her. If I could ad­mire her de­ci­sion to re­main child-free, I felt en­cour­aged to ad­mire my own. She made me feel nor­mal. As long as I had our friend­ship, I wasn’t alone and I had rea­son to be­lieve I was on the right track.

We ar­ranged to meet for din­ner in Soho af­ter work on a Fri­day. The waiter took our drinks or­der and I asked for our usual – two Dirty Vodka Mar­ti­nis.

‘Er, not for me,’ she said. ‘A sparkling wa­ter, thank you.’ I was ready to make a joke about her un­char­ac­ter­is­tic ab­sti­nence, which she sensed, so as soon as the waiter left she said: ‘I’m preg­nant.’

I didn’t know what to say. I can’t imag­ine the ex­pres­sion on my face was par­tic­u­larly en­thu­si­as­tic, but I couldn’t help it – I was shocked and felt an un­war­ranted but in­tense sense of be­trayal. In a de­layed re­ac­tion, I stood up and went to her side of the ta­ble to hug her, un­able to find words of con­grat­u­la­tions. I asked what had made her change her mind and she spoke in va­garies about it ‘just be­ing the right time’ and wouldn’t elab­o­rate any fur­ther and give me an an­swer. And I needed an an­swer. I needed an an­swer more than any­thing that night. I needed to know whether she’d had a re­al­iza­tion that I hadn’t and, if so, I wanted to know how to get it.

When I woke up the next day, I re­al­ized the feel­ing I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing was not anger or jeal­ousy or bit­ter­ness – it was grief. I had no one left. They’d all gone. Of course, they hadn’t re­ally gone, they were still my friends and I still loved them. But huge parts of them had dis­ap­peared and there was noth­ing they could do to change that. Un­less I joined them in their spa­ces, on their sched­ules, with their fam­i­lies, I would barely see them.

And I started dream­ing of an­other life, one com­pletely re­moved from all of it. No more chil­dren’s birth­day par­ties, no more chris­ten­ings, no more bar­be­cues in the sub­urbs. A life I hadn’t ever se­ri­ously con­tem­plated be­fore. I started dream­ing of what it would be like to start all over again. Be­cause as long as I was here in the only Lon­don I knew – mid­dle-class Lon­don, cor­po­rate Lon­don, mid-thir­ties Lon­don, mar­ried Lon­don – I was in their world. And I knew there was a whole other world out there.”
― Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“Jane started say­ing ‘Wel­come to be­ing in a re­la­tion­ship’ to me over and over again.

I’d tell her about all the com­pro­mises I was mak­ing and how much Andy’s self-ab­sorp­tion could ir­ri­tate me and how I’d no­ticed that he’d stopped find­ing me sexy and started find­ing me sweet – that he used to grab my bum and kiss me, and now he kissed me on the head and pulled the zip­per of my jacket up and down in a cutesy way. ‘Wait till he stops find­ing you sweet,’ she said. ‘That’s a whole other phase.’

I told her about how much time was spent com­fort­ing him and buoy­ing him up and get­ting him out of low moods. How his emo­tions were al­ways more im­por­tant than mine – that when we had arguments, his feel­ings were dis­cussed as facts and mine were in­ter­ro­gated as fab­ri­ca­tions. ‘Jen,’ she said mat­ter-of-factly, ‘do you even want a boyfriend?’

I asked her if this was all stuff she put up with and she nod­ded. ‘Wel­come to be­ing in a re­la­tion­ship,’ she said.

And I thought: I don’t want to be wel­come here. I don’t want to get com­fort­able here.”
― Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“It’s all so random and unfair – the people we want to be with don’t want to be with us and the people who want to be with us are not the people we want to be with.”
― Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“I didn’t want to know all these words, charged with urgency and crisis. I didn’t feel like they related to me. Hadn’t I just turned twenty-one? Hadn’t I just left university? Hadn’t my life only just begun? I couldn’t fathom how I had got here so quickly and how I could be expected to make such enormous decisions while I still felt so young. How had this happened?”
― Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“It wasn't that she didn't like people. It was that she liked books more. They didn't fuss or judge or mock or reject.They invited you in, fluffed up the pillows on the couch, offered you tea and toast, and shared their hearts with no expectation that you'd do anything more than absorb what they had to give.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Spellshop

“It’s hard.” “What is?” “Being alive.” “It is,” Arthur agreed. “But perhaps that’s the point: the trials and tribulations of life weigh heavily upon us, but we find people to help lighten the load.”
― T.J. Klune, Somewhere Beyond the Sea

“Linus told me something once, and I think about it a lot. He said it's okay to not be okay, so long as it doesn't become all we know.”
― Tj Klune, Cerulean Chronicles Series Collection Set of 2 Books. The House in the Cerulean Sea and Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune

“Everything seems interesting when you don't know much about it. And everyone. It's so easy to romanticize another person from a distance, only to be disappointed when you actually get to know her. Because the parts were more interesting than the whole.”
― Therese Bohman, Andromeda

“Bravery is being unafraid of something other people are afraid of. Courage is being afraid, but strong enough to do it anyway.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Atmosphere

“Happiness is so hard to come by. I don't understand why anyone would begrudge anyone else for managing to find some of it.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Atmosphere