Mary Ann Shaffer Quotes

31 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Mary Ann Shaffer
Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.

Mary Ann Shaffer
Will Thisbee gave me The Beginner's Cook-Book for Girl Guides. It was just the thing; the writer assumes you know nothing about cookery and writes useful hints - "When adding eggs, break the shells first.

Mary Ann Shaffer
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?

Mary Ann Shaffer
I hope, too, that my book will illuminate my belief that love of art - be it poetry, storytelling, painting, sculpture, or music - enables people to transcend any barrier man has yet devised.

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

Mary Ann Shaffer
What a blight that woman is. Do you happen to know why? I lean toward a malignant fairy at her christening.

Mary Ann Shaffer
Naturally curly hair is a curse, and don't ever let anyone tell you different.

Mary Ann Shaffer
Treat a dog right and he'll treat you right.... Cats is different, but I never held it against them.

Mary Ann Shaffer
Friends, show me a man who hates himself, and I'll show you a man who hates his neighbors more! He'd have to—you'd not grant anyone else something you can't have for yourself—no love, no kindness, no respect!

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

Mary Ann Shaffer
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 parson friend, calls it Grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and "fruitfulness" is drawn in.

Mary Ann Shaffer
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.

Mary Ann Shaffer
People don't know how chickens can turn on you, but they can — just like mad dogs.

Mary Ann Shaffer
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 geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.

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

Mary Ann Shaffer
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.

Mary Ann Shaffer
We read books, talked books, argued over books and became dearer and dearer to one another.

Mary Ann Shaffer
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.

Mary Ann Shaffer
I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers— booksellers really are a special breed. No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no one in his right mind would want to own one— the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it— along with first dibs on the new books.

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

Mary Ann Shaffer
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.

Mary Ann Shaffer
I think you learn more if you're laughing at the same time.

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

Mary Ann Shaffer
I never met a man half so true as a dog. Treat a dog right, and he'll treat you right. He'll keep you company, be your friend, and never ask you no questions. Cats is different, but I never held that against 'em.

Mary Ann Shaffer
Because there is nothing I would rather do than rummage through bookshops, I went at once to Hastings & Sons Bookshop upon receiving your letter. I have gone to them for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadn't known I wanted.

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

Mary Ann Shaffer
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 bystander. I'll watch him closely at the next full moon. He's asked me to go dancing tomorrow—perhaps I should wear a high collar. Oh, that's vampires, isn't it? I think I am a little giddy. (After meeting Mr. Markham V. Reynolds, Jr.)

Mary Ann Shaffer
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.

Mary Ann Shaffer