The Printed Letter Bookshop Quotes

“You could lose yourself in a book and, paradoxically, find yourself as well.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“That's what books do, Maddie used to say; they are a conversation, and introduce us to ourselves and others.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“Our understanding is so limited, Janet. Be careful not to assume God’s role or presume you understand his ways or the depth of his love. Promise me.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“Good, fully dimensional characters let us live their lives vicariously, and bad ones tell us about the authors.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“Love in action is a hard and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“For the present is the point at which time touches eternity. —C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“It’s about a woman, who may be a wife. But it’s first and foremost about a woman, and it’s not an unattainable description of an idealized woman. She’s born of experience and, I like to believe, knows her worth because she knows who created her. One of my favorite things John Paul II ever said was ‘Woman transcends all expectations when her heart is faithful to God.’ All expectations. And I’ve seen it too. My mom was amazing. My sisters are strong women—two are unmarried, by the way, and this is who they are. They don’t need a husband to be this woman. I believe God can do tremendous things through you—once you stop trying to wield all the power yourself.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“Blood might be thicker than water, but both were thinner than money”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“How often it is a small, almost unconscious event that marks a turning point.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“The Four Loves Killers of the Flower Moon Crazy Rich Asians The Screwtape Letters Rebecca Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook Sense and Sensibility Number the Stars The Awakening of Miss Prim The Hiding Place Church of Spies: The Pope’s Secret War Against Hitler Animal Farm Alice in Wonderland All Quiet on the Western Front And Then There Were None Antony and Cleopatra”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“Cinder Slaughterhouse-Five Becoming Mrs. Lewis Diary of a Wimpy Kid Buffalo Before Breakfast (Magic Tree House #18) Magnolia Table The Apothecary A Year in Provence Under the Tuscan Sun House of Spies The Paris Architect The Joy Luck Club Little Dorrit A Man Called Ove Nine Women, One Dress Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“Fahrenheit 451 The Brothers Karamazov The Horse and His Boy Unbroken Seabiscuit The Life of Pi Persuasion All the Light We Cannot See Pride and Prejudice The World of Winnie-the-Pooh “To a Mouse” A Christmas Carol A Wrinkle in Time Anne of Green Gables Gone Girl 1984 Inkheart”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“In the Midst of Winter Harry Potter Anna Karenina War and Peace Dr. Zhivago The Secret Garden Flowers in the Attic The Giver Gathering Blue The Hunger Games The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe The Lord of the Rings The Girl on the Train The Further Adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge The Catcher in the Rye The Outsiders Lord of the Flies”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition. I loved that line. I’d laughed out loud when I stumbled across it and read it at least five times to commit it to memory. It was so true. It applied to work and it applied to life. So much did not call for rational opposition.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“It’s like you live in those classics you love, in some odd third-person narration, as if you aren’t in charge of your own story. Who is, if not you, for goodness’ sake?”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“I have no way to tell him of the cacophonous emotions jangling within me - to feel wired for others yet irrelevant; to need community but equally to be unable to find one; that cleaning, cooking, and caring for my family is a pleasure and a blessing, but it isn't the same as feeling connected to them; to do things for others isn't the same as being with them; that watching television side by side isn't always "spending an evening together." And that each year I feel gravity pull at my face, my breasts, my soul, and I wonder... I wonder what within me is compelling enough that anyone would stay with me.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“But it's not the same - I know. Family means more. You can miss your family so much you have to look down to see your chest rise and fall, to confirm that it hasn't been cut open and you're not bleeding out and you're still breathing. Friends can't hurt you like that, nor can they fill that fissure.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“Eternity only reaches us in the present.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“Making art is a vulnerable thing isn't it? Sometimes it feels like I'm bleeding onto the canvas, and if I don't paint, I'll die. I need this. And that's another thing. I say I need it so much, and I do, yet I put my brushes down almost thirty years ago. Who was I punishing? Seth or me?”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“Madaline shakes her head and stands to leave. "Keep painting, I didn't mean to disturb you. I wanted to... see what you were up to."

I get this girl. A connection is what she was going to say. She wanted a connection with someone at that moment, but she pulled back before committing. The word floats between us. We feel it, but we both have our armor and time, expectation, and fear have made that armor very strong so she doesn't ask and I don't push.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“I recognize her stance and her expression and realize, my own Mom had been right. You are who you are at two, at seventeen, and maybe even at forty-six. You can just forget or get lost for a time.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“He didn't come to my crossroads. He hasn't read a list of books full of people experiencing far worse, and yet understanding that there is more that matters in a life than what happens in a moment or on this earth. That it often isn't the events that haunt us (though those hold power and can harm us) it is the choices we make within those events we carry all our days.

As much as I've tried, I haven't been able to articulate that. Probably because I don't have the language yet. Maddie's books provided a trail, like breadcrumbs, leading me to who I want to be, or maybe back to who I once set out to be. But they didn't give me the language with which to share the journey.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“It wasn't all good, not yet. But it was getting better.

With each sale of furniture, sacrificed for this place, something had cracked inside me.

I thought, at first, it was the end, my security wrenched away piece by piece. But rather than break me, the cracks opened spaces that had never existed before. I decided to trust.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“The woman I see out and about in town is not the woman i see in here.

Outside The Printed Letter, Claire is contained, silent, worried she'll say the wrong thing, wear the wrong thing, do the wrong thing.

Everything about her is fashioned not to be noticed. Her makeup just right, not too much to be beautiful and striking, only enough to create a blank palette. Her hair is the same: brown bob with flyaways normally tamed by a little hairspray. If you don't notice something or someone, you can't reject it, or her.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“Again and again I'm asked for suggestions. I find myself beginning, as Maddie did, with some questions.

"What's your favorite movie?"

"What's the last great book you read?"

and her standby favorite, "What was your favorite book when you were 16?"

That last question surprises people the first time they're asked. Then their faces light, and their eyes glance up as they drift back in time to that golden age and that one book that defined not only the adult they were becoming but the hidden expression of their inner world.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“Now, over a year later, in a church devoid of mirth, the memory of that laugh filled Claire with the same sense of wonder it had that first afternoon.

It was a laugh without subtext, genuine, soulful, and rich. It filled her with a sense of awe and terror, both then and now. Awe that someone could feel such genuine pleasure at the mundane, terror that she might never again feel it herself.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“It appeals to the young or the young at heart, or to those who need to believe in dead things growing again...Mary Lennox begins her journey in a new and unfamiliar land but makes her mark on it, she transforms it and renews the people around her as well as herself. She blossoms.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“She smells of gardenias. I open my mouth to snap at her, it's December. Change your perfume.

I clamp my lips tight before the words escape. Not to save her feelings, but because it's a beautiful spring smell, a green blossoming hope filled smell full of fresh new beginnings. I'm in the fall of life and I hate it.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“Crazy meant bold, daring, fearless. It was a radiant word endowed with virtue and supernatural strength. For years, I wanted to be called crazy too.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop

“But he does say there's a fine line between healing and hiding and that I'm flirting with it.”
― Katherine Reay, The Printed Letter Bookshop