Harriet Lane Quotes

Over time, I've come to see that so much of a personality boils down to confidence: whether you have it, or not.

I found the final plot twist unsatisfying, as plot twists often are: nothing like life, which - it seems to me - turns less on shocks or theatrics than on the small quiet moments, misunderstandings, or disappointments, the things that it's easy to overlook.

I know the names of the books - their old covers bleached to palest greens or pinks by the endless cycle of summers - lined up on the shelf.

I've thought about the pictures often; what they show or, more accurately, don't show. Remembering what was happening elsewhere: in the distance, or behind the camera, off to one side.

Emma is the engine of this home, the person who propels it forward, keeps everyone fed and clothed and healthy and happy - and yet she's entirely alone within it, and getting lonelier with every item ticked off her checklist. This is what it comes down to: the flat-out invisible drudgery of family maintenance, the vanishing of personality as everyone else's accrues.

I turn my back and look out to sea, the sun so low and molten that my eyes fill with tears, and yet I can feel it: a cooler wind is coming in, the edge of evening approaching. Dusk is gathering along the coast, in the coves and quaysides and marinas, where in an hour or so the long strings of coloured bulbs will twinkle and sway; and then it will pass over us-like a visitation: a plague or a blessing....

All this talk about "finding yourself"; often, other people show you yourself first.

Maybe it's not really lying if you barely know you're doing it. It should be true. It's the way it should be, in an ideal world.