Mary Ann Shaffer Quotes - Page 2

His writings have made me his friend.

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)!

But you want to know about the influence of books on my life, and as I've said, there was only one. Seneca. . .Maybe that sounds dull, but the letters aren't - they're witty. I think you learn more if you're laughing at the same time.

When I got up this morning the sea was full of sun pennies - and now it all seems to be covered in lemon scrim. Writers ought to live far inland or next to the city dump, if they are ever to get any work one. Or perhaps they need to be stronger-minded than I am.

I much prefer whining to counting my blessings.

I believe I am becoming pathetic. I'll go further, I believe that I am in love with a flower-growing, wood-carving quarryman/carpenter/pig farmer. In fact, I know I am. Perhaps tomorrow I will become entirely miserable at the thought that he doesn't love me back - may, even, care for Remy- but at this precise moment I am succumbing to euphoria. My head and stomach feel quite odd.

Isola doesn't approve of small talk and believes in breaking the ice by stomping on it.

This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.

Isn't that something-to know your own soul by hearsay, instead of its own tidings? Why should I let a preacher tell me if I had one or not? If I could believe I hada soul, all by myself, then I could listen to its tidings all by myself.

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

I, too, have felt that the war goes on and on. When my son, Ian, died at El Alamein-- side by side with... visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said, "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and nexe year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it.

Women like poetry. A soft word in their ears and they melt - a grease spot on the grass.

In a good mood I call my hair Chestnut with Gold Glints. In a bad mood, I call it mousy brown

Miss X has always been a ditherer -- she was a ten month baby and has not improved in any material way since then.

I don't want to be married just to be married.

I sometimes think I prefer suitors in books rather than right in front of me. How awful, backward, cowardly, and mentally warped that will be if it turns out to be true.

I don’t know whether to feel flattered or hunted.

If there is Predestination, then God is the devil. by Remy, Ravensbruck concentration camp survivor

Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb.

Treat a dog right and he'll treat you right - he'll keep you company, be your friend, never ask you no questions. Cats is different, but I never held that against them.

It was amazing to me then, and still is, that so many people who wander into bookshops don't really know what they're after--they only want to look around and hope to see a book that will strike their fancy. And then, being bright enough not to trust the publisher's blurb, they will ask the book clerk the three questions: (1) What is it about? (2) Have you read it? (3) Was it any good?

People don't know how chickens can turn on you, but they can -- just like mad dogs.

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

Do you suppose the St. Swithin's furnace-man was my one true love? Since I never spoke to him, it seems unlikely, but at least it was a passion unscathed by disappointment.

Your questions regarding that gentleman are very delicate, very subtle, very much like being smacked in the head with a mallet...it's a tuba among the flutes.