Jenny Colgan Quotes

. . . when people dedicate their lives to one thing that they really, really love and learn a lot about, amazing things can happen.

Nina wondered what on Earth it would be to have that much money; to buy that many books without worrying.

Halloween is an ancient druidic holiday, one the Celtic peoples have celebrated for millennia. It is the crack between the last golden rays of summer and the dark of winter; the delicately balanced tweak of the year before it is given over entirely to the dark; a time for the souls of the departed to squint, to peek and perhaps to travel through the gap. What could be more thrilling and worthy of celebration than that? It is a time to celebrate sweet bounty, as the harvest is brought in. It is a time of excitement and pleasure for children before the dark sets in. We should all celebrate that.

She is resisting the Internet idea...because she doesn't want to one day tell her children that she posted an ad on the Internet, interviewed twenty-five hopeful candidates, and finally their father turned up and looked good in comparison with the rest of them. It just doesn't seem right.

Some people buried their fears in food, she knew, and some in booze, and some in planning elaborate engagements and weddings and other life events that took up every spare moment of their time, in case unpleasant thoughts intruded. But for Nina, whenever reality, or the grimmer side of reality, threatened to invade, she always turned to a book. Books had been her solace when she was sad; her friends when she was lonely. They had mended her heart when it was broken, and encouraged her to hope when she was down. Yet

Everyone is alien. And even when you are in love with someone, even when you think you know them better than you know yourself; even when you think you know everything about them and they you, and you live in each other's souls.

Even then you know nothing about them at all.

hiraeth (n): a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home that maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for lost places in your past

The problem with good things that happen is that very often they disguise themselves as awful things.

However, these days everyone holds their stupid smartphone in front of them the entire time in case somebody likes a dog picture on Facebook and they miss it by two seconds...

Just do something. You might make a mistake, then you can fix it. But if you do nothing, you can't fix anything. And your life might turn out full of regrets.

Then when Matt had come along it hadn't been fireworks, passion and fights and drama. It had been low- key, sweet, lovely. But that didn't meant it wasn't the real thing. It never had done. Just because it wasn't suprising hadn't meant it wasn't right.

This is what you British do not understand about the French. You think you must work, work, work, work and open on Sundays and make mothers and fathers with families slave in supermarkets at three o'clock in the morning and make people leave their homes and their churches and their children and go shopping on Sundays.'
'Their shops are open on Sundays?' said Benoît in surprise.
'Yes! They make people work on Sundays! And through lunchtimes! But for what? For rubbish from China? For cheap clothes sewed by poor women in Malaysia? For why? So you can go more often to KFC and get full of fried chicken? You would rather have six bars of bad chocolate than one bar of good chocolate. Why? Why are six bad things better than one good thing? I don't understand.

nothing that seemed to have anything to do with what she'd done her entire life, the only job she wanted: finding the right book for the right person. She

If you weren't an extrovert, if you weren't shoving yourself out into the open all the time, posting selfies everywhere, demanding attention, talking constantly, people just gazed right past you. You got overlooked.

I never understand," he said, shaking his head, "why anyone would go to the trouble of making up new people in this world when there's already billions of the buggers I don't give a shit about.

She had handed him her heart in her hands without truly knowing whether this quiet, enclosed man could be trusted with it. But it had gone; it had flown from her as if it had always been his, regardless of what he wanted to do with it.

We'd even devised the Buffy scale of life relationships: you start off wanting Xander, spend your twenties going out with Spike and setttle down with giles.

That thing that everyone talks about. That really big newspaper in the sky that came along and ruined everything else, blah blah blah.'
Rosie was stumped, until light finally dawned. 'You mean the internet?'
'Well, yes. I hate that thing.'
'The whole thing?'
'Yes.'
'You hate the entire internet?'
'Yes.

it seemed there was no place for librarians anymore.

My good man, could we have one deadly issue to deal with at a time?

She didn't look like anyone else Marsha had ever seen, and she lived in New York where eventually you saw everyone, more or less. Her pale hair; her skin was practically albino; those strange silvery blue-green eyes . . . You didn't quite notice her at first glance; she was average . . . then you took a closer look and she was extremely striking. Her voice when she spoke wasn't always easy to understand, but it sounded to Marsha like music. Please, she thought to herself. Let her be kind. But not too kind.

There was a universe inside every human being every bit as big as the universe outside them. Books were the best way Nina knew - apart from, sometimes, music - to breach the barrier, to connect the internal universe with the external, the words acting merely as a conduit between the two worlds.

The way my luck is at the moment," said Polly, "I probably will get a tiny bit of money back, and as I leave the bank after picking it up, a bolt of lightning will come out of the sky and set it on fire. Then a piano will fall on my head and knock me down a manhole.

It was a very odd concept - that you could become friends with someone simply by examining their bookshelves - but nevertheless, Zoe believed it fervently.

They were probably reading on their tablets," said Nina loyally. She loved her e-reader, too. "Yes, I know," said the man. "But I couldn't see. I couldn't see what they were reading or ask them if it was good, or make a mental note to look for it later. It was as if suddenly, one day, all the books simply disappeared.

I have a head for business and a body for sin. Unfortunately, the sin appears to be gluttony.

Books had been her solace when she was sad, her friends when she was lonely. They had mended her heart when it was broken, and encouraged her to hope when she was down.

She's home. That's all. That's true love, I can't explain it any better than that.

I want to go to the party!'
'I said no.'
'I've been totally good.'
'You shot me with an arrow.

Because every day with a book is slightly better than one without, and I wish you nothing but the happiest of days. Now,

I think love is caramel. Sweet and fragant; always welcome. It is the gentle golden colour of a setting harvest sun; the warmth of a squeezed embrace; the easy melting of two souls into one and a taste that lingers even when everything else has melted away. Once tasted it is never forgotten.

Reading is being in stuff."
Ben squinted. "Like actually being there?"
"Like actually being there. You plug straight into the writer's brain. It's just you and them. You experience what they experience.

She had always been dainty, and never quite confident enough to dance where anyone might see. Here, though, nobody cared or noticed. The emphasis wasn't on looking good or being sexy or standing out; it was about hurling yourself into it and dancing as if you didn't have a care in the world, or a worry, or even a thought; it was dancing as catharsis, and Nina very quickly found that she absolutely loved it.

Once upon a time when I was young, I had a lovely boyfriend who bought me a hammock and hooked it up on my tiny and highly perilous roof terrace, where I spent many happy hours just rocking and reading, eating Quavers and reflecting on my lovely handsome boyfriend. Then, I married him and we had a bunch of children and a dog and moved somewhere where it rains all the time, and I think the hammock is in storage. This, my friends, is apparently what's known as 'happily ever after'.

A nice manner and a level head would surely get you much further. But that didn't cut much with the big cheeses, who liked flakey mission statements and loud, confident remarks.

The look you get when you're reading in your van, and your feet are up and you sit so still, and your face is alight, and I don't know where you are; you could be anywhere, so far away, off in a part of your mind I'll never get to . . . It drives me crazy. The way you just came here, just got up, changed your entire life . . . I mean, my family's been here for four generations. It would never have occurred to me to do what you did, just to start over and do something different. Amazing.

It was horribly difficult, she reflected, to have finally found the place you thought of as home, only to realize you were going to have to move on again.

Baking is ... Life. So when you describe what you're making, you must describe life. Do you see? It's not just recipes..