The Second Mrs. Astor Quotes

“There are certain people in this world who have the ability to make you feel as if you’re the only person in the universe who matters to them.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“Marriage is work, enormous work, because it’s a living entity that needs everlasting attention. It will push you and bend you and test you, and if you’re not prepared for any of that, it will shatter you.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“The nature of hope is curious to me. It can sustain us through the darkest of times. It can buoy us above every reasonable expectation of despair. Yet hope can shatter us just as readily as the darkness can. People refer to it as false hope, but I think that’s misleading, because the feeling itself is painfully true. It is a treacherous hope, more precisely. A dangerous one.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“You can get the measure of a man by observing the way he treats his animals”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“It can be difficult sometimes for our families to accept us as people separate from who they are. As separate souls. When we’re young, we’re taught to behave as our parents do—to cherish what they cherish and believe what they believe. And for a while, that’s as it should be. But as adults, sometimes we have our own desires, our own hopes, that are at odds with how our parents view the world.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“Although Madeleine’s happiness was palatable, Jack’s was even more”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“I would not attempt to guess at the nature of true love, except to say that when I was immersed in it—swimming through it, breathing it in, holding that breath, exhaling—in those short, extraordinary days and nights I shared with your father, true love was absolutely clear to me. Jack was clear to me. Jack was me, and I was him, and you, sweet child, are now us both.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“Being in love makes all that work easier, but it does not make it go away. There will be necessary sacrifices. There will be pain.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“I would not have the world be cruel to you,” she emphasized. “I would not have Vincent Astor be cruel to you. But if—when—those things happen, I would not have you be cruel in return. Kinder hearts are stronger, I think.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“It’s plain as day Jack adores you. I think he adores you to the point that the thought of being without you terrifies him to the core. And for a man like Jack Astor, that is significant.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“remember what it’s like to fall in love for the first time. To be young and fearless, when the future is spread before you in every color of the rainbow, everything bright, everything impossible suddenly made possible. You’re invincible then.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“I didn’t know it would be our last kiss, the last time we ever spoke. I didn’t know it would be the last time we ever touched.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“crown.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“How awful that was, she thought, exhausted, remote. How wonderful. How awful and wonderful to feel him like this, above my heart, just where his father used to rest his head.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“With the carnelian necklace wrapped around her hand like a rosary, she rested her palm against the lid. The stone beads made the tiniest, tiniest clacking sound as they met the wood. She bent over. Through the fabric of her veil, she touched her lips to the mahogany. “Asalamu alaykum,” Madeleine whispered. “Goodbye, my heart, my guide. Goodbye, beloved.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“At long last, I had managed to gain the world’s admiration and respect, and all it took was the loss of my husband. The felling of my heart.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“I was young, I was wealthy, and I was famous. That was all they really knew, and that was all they needed to know. It was enough to sustain their fantasies.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“I became, overnight, the sweetheart of the world. From gold-digging social climber, I was transformed into the tragic “girl widow,” a fecund symbol of all that had gone wrong with society today. Man’s hubris and vice had left me—and other, less recognizable widows than me—stranded upon the shores of . . . I don’t know. Islands of hubris and vice, I expect.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“The nature of hope is curious to me. It can sustain us through the darkest of times. It can buoy us above every reasonable expectation of despair. Yet hope can shatter us just as readily as the darkness can. People refer to it as false hope, but I think that’s misleading, because the feeling itself is painfully true.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“Kinder hearts are stronger, her mother had once said. Maddy needed to be strong.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“I’ve mulled for many an hour on that, the compulsion to discuss what had happened again and again. I think now I’ve teased it out. If one breaks the horror apart, breaks it into all these little, smaller moments, perhaps it’s possible to reconstruct it in such a way as to make everything more . . . manageable. At any rate, it’s a better way to carry on than turning to laudanum.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“Madeleine, you can’t think only of me right now. There are three of us in our family, and at this moment, you comprise the most valuable two of our three. The finest honor I’ve been given in this world—that I will ever be given—is the task of safeguarding you and our child. Take the boat.” He touched her cheek. “You’re a mermaid, remember? The sea is your element. You’ll be fine, and we’ll all be together again soon. New York, at the very latest.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“A number of ill-mannered souls—reporters, of course—have dared, in these latter weeks, to ask me the best thing I remember about Titanic. About the ship itself. As if by telling them that, everything that followed might be negated. Rendered less.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“Titanic arrived eating up the flat horizon. Titanic arrived swallowing the waves.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“There’s no need to worry, madam. Titanic is the safest ocean liner in the world.” “That’s right,” agreed Margaret, but her eyes were distant once more. “Everyone says so.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“I just—oh, I just have the most frightful feeling about it all. I’m sorry! I’m not usually like this. But I have the most frightful feeling. Just the most foreboding feeling about getting on that ship.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“I don’t know. All those rapt, late-night conversations about Titanic. I think maybe they seeped into him like a poison.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“That was the sum and skill of her life now, it seemed. How to make herself alluring to this magnetic, just-out-of-reach man.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“Each new gathering, each new luncheon or dinner held in our honor was conducted in rigid ceremony. Our mothers and grandmothers seemed to be warning us, Yes, once and for all, your childhood is over. Womanhood means you must not ever laugh or burp or break wind again. This is how you will marry well.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor

“If you dance in the limelight, it’s only natural that people will look at you. You can’t expect otherwise.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor