The House at the End of Hope Street Quotes

“It takes great courage and determination, to keep looking for light in all the darkness of life.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“If you get a chance you should marry an archaeologist. I don’t suppose there are too many to go around, but it’s the best sort of husband to have. The older a woman gets, the more he’s interested in her.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“It’s not just the books Alba craves, it’s standing inside a place that houses millions of them. Libraries are Alba’s churches, and the university library, containing one edition of every book ever published in England, is her cathedral.”
― Menna Van Praag , The House at the End of Hope Street

“I love chocolate cake for breakfast,” Peggy stalls, “it sets me up for the day. A little decadence is good for the soul.” She’s been eating more cake than usual, lately. Impending death does have compensations after all, then, if only chocolate-covered ones.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“Now you’re discovering the great secret of great writing: one line of true feeling is worth a thousand pages of clever thinking.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“A vast skylight is cut into the ceiling, so she can fall asleep studying the stars. She doesn’t know their real names, preferring mysteries to facts,”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“And some people don’t have what it takes to be happy. It’s not an easy thing, you know. It takes great courage and determination, to keep looking for light in all the darkness of life.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“Stella knows Alba must be allowed to feel her grief, must dive headlong into despair, before she can emerge again, her spirit deeper and richer than before.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“If you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be dead. And, as a life strategy, I don’t really recommend it.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“book brings her comfort still, now soothing different pains, a literary safety blanket Alba can wrap around her fingers and hold until she forgets all the things she wants to forget. Few other novels have been able to offer similar protection against poisoned memories,”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of writers who have minded the opinions of others.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“If you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be dead,” Stella says. “And, as a life strategy, I don’t really recommend it.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“But do you really want to spend your life like this, as if you’re locked in a library?” “Of course.” Alba grins. “I can’t think of anything better.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“I don’t think tea will quite do, we need something a little more fortifying on such an auspicious occasion. Hot chocolate with fresh cream, that’s the thing.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“And, like most people, you’re too scared, stubborn or stupid to give yourself what you need until you’re shaken awake by something.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“There is no going back in life. No return. No second chance. When you waste your days, they are wasted forever. So be honest about the things you really want, and do them, no matter how fearful you might be.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“After he's gone Greer sits for a long time. She rests her head on her knees and weeps - not because she loved Blake and not because she's lost him. But because she did not care of herself. She knew Blake's nature the moment she met him, just as she knew the philandering fiancé. She knew them and she knew herself. Greer thinks of the story of the scorpion and the frog, and she knows she cannot blame these men for her messy life, they only did what she always knew they would do. No, this is not about crushed hopes and broken dreams. This is about trusting her own heart. Hope doesn't even enter into it.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“I can’t trust anyone who won’t take real cream, or real sugar.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“We all have to make choices,” Joan said. “Since we can’t have two lives, only one. But, most of those choices we make fresh every day, not just once. So, if you regret something, if you want to change your mind, you usually can.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“There’s as much chance of me leaving this kitchen,” Stella says, “as you putting down a book.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“She still hasn’t cried because to stay in shock feels safer, it keeps a distance between her and the thing she’s trying to pretend hasn’t happened.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“The eyes of others are our prisons; their thoughts our cages.” Alba frowns. “Really?” “Dismiss that warning at your peril,” Dorothy says. “Literature is strewn with the wreckage of writers who have minded the opinions of others.”
― Menna Van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“But ever since the worst event of Alba’s life, she’s barely been able to see anything at all, constantly tripping over pavement edges, falling down steps, and walking into walls. She still hasn’t cried because to stay in shock feels safer, it keeps a distance between her and the thing she’s trying to pretend hasn’t happened. The numbness surrounds her, a buffer against the outside world, through which Alba can hardly breathe or see.”
― Menna Van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“Do you ever want to run away?” “Sometimes.” Milly laughed. “But I also know that not everything I want every moment will actually make me happy.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“The woman is scared, wearing her self-confidence like perfume: a heavy, sultry scent to distract onlookers from the broken, blackened pieces of herself she wants no one else to see.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“if she can’t achieve that, something truly brilliant, then what’s the point in living at all? Because in her family, being mediocre, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, simply isn’t allowed.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“When he tells Lucy Honeychurch “You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you” – isn’t that wonderful? I think that’s how you know if it’s true love or not. It is if it stays with you for the rest”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“Do you know where he went?”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“dependency,”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street

“As the thick liquid slips down her throat and into her belly, Alba starts to feel warm and soft, as if the kitchen has just hugged her. And, after a few minutes she isn't scared to tell the truth anymore. At least a little bit of truth.”
― Menna van Praag, The House at the End of Hope Street