Quotes by Mary Ann Shaffer

“Think of it! We could have gone on longing for one another and pretending not to notice forever. This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.”

“Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.”

“Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.”

“I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.”

“All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged -- after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The ...”

“I think you learn more if you're laughing at the same time.”

“What on earth did you say to Isola? She stopped in on her way to pick up Pride and Prejudice and to berate me for never telling her about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Why hadn't she known there ...”

“Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person's name suddenly pops up everywhere you go? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Mr. Simpless, my par...”

“I did not throw 'The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation' at the audience. I threw it at the elocution mistress. I meant to cast it at her feet, but I missed.”

“She is one of those ladies who is more beautiful at sixty than she could possibly have been at twenty. (how I hope someone says that about me someday)!”

“Now that I think about it, maybe he is a werewolf. I can picture him lunging over the moors in hot pursuit of his prey, and I'm certain that he wouldn't think twice about eating an innocent bystand...”

“I wish Id known those words on the day I watched those German troops land, plane-load after plane-load of themand come off ships down in the harbor! All I could think of was damn them, damn them, o...”

“Then I imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again.”

“I don't know as much about children as I would like to. I am godmother to a wonderful three-year-old boy named dominic, the son of my friend Sophie. They live in Scotland, near Oban, and I don't ge...”

“Yesterday, Amelia and Kit came over for supper, and we took a blanket down to the beach afterward to watch the moon rise. Kit loves to do that, but she always falls asleep before it is fully rise, ...”

“Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.”

“I did not want to spend my time reading about people who never were, doing things they never did.”

“That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometri...”

“I have gone to [this bookshop] for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadnt known I wanted.”

“Do you arrange your books alphabetically? (I hope not.)”