Miss Benson's Beetle Quotes

“It was so easy to find yourself doing the things in life you weren’t passionate about, to stick with them even when you didn’t want them and they hurt. But now the time for dreaming and wishing was over, and she was going. She was traveling to the other side of the world. It wasn’t just the ship that had been unmoored. It was her entire sense of herself.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“Just because you've never done something doesn't mean you can't start.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“You might travel to the other side of the world, but in the end it made no difference: whatever devastating unhappiness was inside you would come too.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“She had travelled to the other side of the world, but the distance she'd covered inside herself was immeasurable.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“But no matter how awful life was, I would never want to give up. I would always want to keep living. Just waiting for that moment when it might get better. You need to remember that, Marge. You must never give up again.” She touched her belly. “We are not the things that happened to us. We can be what we like.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“It struck her again: a life was such a short thing. All those things people carried, and struggled to carry, yet one day they would disappear, and so would the suffering inside them, and all that would be left was this. The trees, the moon, the dark.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“The truest friendships are those that allow us to step out of the confines of what we once were, and to realize instead what we might be.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“But there were moments of joy. Even at its worst, life will offer such moments.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“History is not made up by events alone, but also by what lies between the lines.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“Answered prayers can be frightening, suggesting—as they do—an obligation to act.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“It occurred to Marjery that this was how it was, that there was always darkness, and in this darkness was unspeakable suffering, and yet there were also the daily things -- there was even the search for a gold beetle -- and while they could not cancel the appalling horror, they were as real.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“friendships are those that allow us to step out of the confines of what we once were, and to realize instead what we might be.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“she’d stuffed the boots beneath the mattress where she couldn’t see them, but it isn’t easy hiding something from yourself—ideally you need to be out of the room when you do it”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“Enid had been right. She had been right all along. Margery's adventure was not about making her mark on the world: it was about letting the world make its mark on her.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“And, after all, what did it mean? Home? Suppose it was not the place you came from, but a thing you carried with you, like a suitcase. And you could lose your suitcase, she knew that now. You could open another person’s luggage, and put on their clothes, and though you might feel different at first, out of your depth, something inside you was the same, and even a little more true to itself, a little more free.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“But war was not over just because someone signed a truce. It was inside him. And when a thing like war was inside you, it never left.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“Besides she had been raised in a house of women whose skill at not saying a difficult thing verged on professional. The truth had become such an elusive entity, she could as easily talk about her feelings as ride a mule.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“Being a friend meant accepting those unknowable things. It meant saying, “Look! Look how big my leg is! And look how small yours is! Look how marvelously different we are, you and I, and yet here we are, together in this strange world!”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“I would never want to give up. I would always want to keep living. Just waiting for that moment when it might get better.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“... Margery took in that view and got the strangest sense that everything she wanted was ahead and available, so long as she was brave enough to claim it.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson’s Beetle

“In the absence of anything holy, and probably also in the absence of much that was kind, Enid had built her entire world around superstition. It would be as hard to knock it down as flatten a cathedral.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“He put everything back in his haversack, but he didn't know what to do with the things from the past. He had no idea where you were supposed to put things that existed only inside your head.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“Her father showed her the Himalayan yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, the Patagonian giant sloth. There was the Irish elk with antles as big as wings. The South African quagga, which started as a zebra until it ran out of stripes and became a horse. The great auk, the lion-tailed monkey, the Queensland tiger. So many incredible extra creatures in the world, and nobody had found a single one of them.
"Do you think they're real?" she said.
Her father nodded. "I have begun to feel comforted," he said, "by the thought of all we do not know, which is nearly everything.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“He closed the door gently behind him, as if it had feelings,”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“It was so easy to find yourself doing the things in life you weren’t passionate about, to stick with them even when you didn’t want them and they hurt. But now the time for dreaming and wishing was over, and she was going. She was traveling to the other side of the world. It wasn’t just the ship that had been unmoored. It was her entire sense of herself”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“When I set out to write a book about beetles and New Caledonia, I knew nothing about either of them. While this might have put some people off, it felt (to me) a very good place to begin.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“I’m terrified of mules. I got bitten once. Enid, I cannot go on a mule. It will bite me.” “Margery, if you do not get on a mule, I will bite you.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“However, when Margery had carefully planned this conversation, she hadn’t carefully planned it with Enid on the receiving end. It was so much easier to have difficult conversations with Enid when she wasn’t there. Now that they were sitting at the table, Margery couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Enid talked nonstop. A crowd of old men gathered, setting up chairs just to watch.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“Margery’s heart dropped. Or maybe it was her stomach. Hard to tell. Since drinking Enid’s coffee, her insides had begun to swap places.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle

“Sorry. I was just thinking. I must have talked by mistake.”
― Rachel Joyce, Miss Benson's Beetle