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And yet he could also be very charming, in a bookish, infinitely apologetic way.
Paula McLain
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At twenty-eight I'd had a handful of beaux, but had only been in love once, and that had been awful enough to make me doubt men and myself for a good long while.
Paula McLain
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I also liked to look around at the houses surrounding the park and wonder about the people who filled them, what kinds of marriages they had and how they loved or hurt each other on any given day, and if they were happy, and whether they thought happiness was a sustainable thing.
Paula McLain
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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.
Paula McLain
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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.
Paula McLain
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I'd had my share of rain. My mother's illness... had weighed on me, but the years before had been heavy, too. I was only twenty eight.
Paula McLain
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Don't tell readers what to think. Let the action speak for itself.
Paula McLain
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Sometimes I wish we could rub out all of our mistakes and start fresh, from the beginning,' I said. 'And sometimes I think there isn't anything to us but our mistakes.
Paula McLain
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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.
Paula McLain
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All that was left for me was a terrible kind of paralysis, this waiting game, this heartbreak game.
Paula McLain
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It was our favorite part of the day, this in-between time, and it always seemed to last longer than it should—a magic and lavender space unpinned from the hours around it, between worlds.
Paula McLain
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It gave me a sharp kind of sadness to think that no matter how much I loved him and tried to put him back together again, he might stay broken forever.
Paula McLain
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I preferred to look at the sea, which said nothing and never made you feel alone.
Paula McLain
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You are everything good and straight and fine and true—and I see that so clearly now, in the way you've carried yourself and listened to your own heart. You've changed me more than you know, and will always be a part of everything I am. That's one thing I've learned from this. No one you love is ever truly lost.
Paula McLain
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Maybe happiness was an hourglass already running out, the grains tipping, sifting past each other. Maybe it was a state of mind.
Paula McLain
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I'd never met anyone so vibrant or alive. He moved like light.
Paula McLain
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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.
Paula McLain
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Happiness is so awfully complicated, but freedom isn't. You're either tied down or you're not.
Paula McLain
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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.
Paula McLain
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You have to digest life. You have to chew it up and love it all through.
Paula McLain
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If I can write one sentence, simple and true every day, I'll be satisfied.
Paula McLain
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I would gladly have climbed out of my skin and into his that night, because I believed that was what love meant.
Paula McLain
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People belong to each other only as long as they both believe. He stopped believing.
Paula McLain
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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.
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Knowing he was suffering pained me. That's the way love tangles you up. I couldn't stop loving him, and couldn't shut off the feelings of wanting to care for him— but I also didn't have to run to answer his letters. I was hurting, too, and no one was running to me.
Paula McLain
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Quote of the day
We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
Lady Randolph Churchill
Paula McLain
Born:
1965
(age 59)
Bio:
Paula McLain is an American author best known for her novel, The Paris Wife, a fictionalized account of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage which became a long-time New York Times bestseller.
Known for:
Circling the Sun: A Novel (2015)
The Paris Wife (2011)
A Ticket to Ride: A Novel (1986)
Stumble, Gorgeous (2005)
Most used words:
love
life
thinking
Paula McLain on Wikipedia
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