Paula McLain - The Paris Wife (2011)

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

Paula McLain
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
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
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
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
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
Don't tell readers what to think. Let the action speak for itself.

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

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

Paula McLain
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
Maybe happiness was an hourglass already running out, the grains tipping, sifting past each other. Maybe it was a state of mind.

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

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

Paula McLain
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
You have to digest life. You have to chew it up and love it all through.

Paula McLain
If I can write one sentence, simple and true every day, I'll be satisfied.

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

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

Paula McLain
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.

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

Paula McLain
Books could be an incredible adventure. I stayed under my blanket and barely moved, and no one would have guessed how my mind raced and my heart soared with stories.

Paula McLain
My life was my life; I would have to stare it down, somehow, and make it work for me.

Paula McLain
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?

Paula McLain
She was also incredibly confident, with a way of moving and talking that communicated that she didn't need anyone to tell her she was beautiful or worthwhile.

Paula McLain