Paula McLain Quotes - Page 2

People belong to each other only as long as they both believe. He stopped believing.

... and yet he could also be very charming, in a bookish, infinitely apologetic way.

I would gladly have climbed out of my skin and into his that night, because I believed that was what love meant.

I hope we'll get lucky enough to grow old together.

To marry was to say you believed in the future and in the past, too-that history and tradition and hope could stay knit together to hold you up.

Why is it every other person you meet says they're an artist? A real artist doesn't need to gas on about it, he doesn't have time. He does his work and sweats it out in silence, and no one can help him at all.

On December 8, 1921, when the Leopoldina set sail for Europe, we were on board. Our life together had finally begun. We held on to each other and looked out at the sea. It was impossibly large and full of beauty and danger in equal parts-and we wanted it all.

And that's when he finally tells me his name is Ernest. I'm thinking of giving it away, though. Ernest is so dull, and Hemingway? Who wants a Hemingway?

The way I see it, how can you really say you'll love a person longer than love lasts?

Happiness is so awfully complicated, but freedom isn't. You're either tied down or you're not.

Ernest once told me that the word paradise was a Persian words that meant walled garden. I knew then that he understood how necessary the promises we made to each other were to our happiness. You couldn't have real freedom unless you knew were the walls were and tended to them. We could lean on the walls because they existed; they existed because we leaned on them.

But when Bumby nursed, his fist clutching the fabric of my robe, his eyes soft and bottomless and locked on mine, as if I were the very heart of his universe, I couldn't help but melt into him.

A week passes but it feels as if he's never been anywhere else. It's one of the things war does to you. Everything you see works to replace moments and people from your life before, until you can't remember why any of it mattered. It doesn't help if you're a soldier. The effect is the same.

Though I often looked for one, I finally had to admit that there could be no cure for Paris.

I'd never met anyone so vibrant or alive. He moved like light.

And sometimes I think there isn’t anything to us but our mistakes.

I preferred to look at the sea, which said nothing and never made you feel alone.

But in the end, fighting for a love that was already gone felt like trying to live in the ruins of a lost city.

How unbelievably naive we both were that night. We clung hard to each other, making vows we couldn't keep and should never have spoken aloud. That's how love is sometimes. I already loved him more than I'd ever loved anything or anyone. I knew he needed me absolutely, and I wanted him to go on needing me forever.

All that was left for me was a terrible kind of paralysis, this waiting game, this heartbreak game.

There was only today to throw yourself into without thinking about tomorrow, let alone forever. To keep you from thinking, there was liquor, an ocean's worth at least, all the usual vices and plenty of rope to hang yourself with. Love is a beautiful liar.

Maybe no one can know how it is for anyone else.

In Paris, you couldn't really turn around without seeing the result of lovers' bad decisions. An artist given to sexual excess was almost a cliché, but no one seemed to mind. As long as you were making something good or interesting or sensational, you could have as many lovers as you wanted and ruin them all.