Katherine Reay Quotes

Music is math, and one you understand that…How can anyone not be in awe? It's the audible expression behind the laws of the universe. It feels like the only thing, apart from God, that lives outside time. Once released, it lives on and it can make you laugh and cry, rip you apart and heal you, all withing a few discrete notes strung together. And while it follows rules, expression is limitless.

Samantha will be just as polite as I am, my dear. She won't be objective at all ... no wait! She corrected my Shakespeare. Maybe she will give you an honest opinion. Let's keep her.

I don't think we get exempt from the pain because we live good lives. Some circumstances we can't control - in fact, most are truly beyond our abilities. Instead maybe it's how we get made new; it's one of the only times we slow down enough to listen and receive grace, real grace.

My childhood wasn't easy. I buried myself in books. I guess I'm a recovering book addict.

Changing, being real and becoming who you want to be, is hard work. Right

Time was never neutral and often felt dangerous. We either think we have all the time in the world or time moves too fast or too slow, a shock can stop time; fear or impending pain can slow it. Time never simply is…And no matter how much you want to hang on to it, time runs out.

But I made it. And for some reason, I'm not worried about my job prospects. I truly believe I will be okay.

How can I not believe that there is a God who exists and loves, when the people before me are infused with that love and pour it out daily?

Don't hang on to the past so tightly that you taint the future.

I've heard all sorts of things about a kiss (melting, fireworks, music), but no one ever told me it's a conversation: asking, accepting, deciding, inviting, giving ... Questions posed and answered.

There was nothing "bright and sparkling" about this one. It was subdued, almost melancholy. Heroine Anne Elliot, perhaps my favorite of the Austen women I'd encountered, waited as circumstances and her world closed in around her. She helped where she could, got tossed about with little care - and she waited.

Love spills out of these people. That's what I want. Settling for anything less is a lie.

My new favorite title is How Jane Austen Ruined My Life. I don't have the courage to read it, though. I'm afraid to discover she's ruined mine as well.

And it's yellow. The way pale yellow should look, like sunshine and butter, mixed with hope and cream.

my best friends. He got a kick out of being in my book.

I mean that reading forms your opinions, your worldview, especially childhood reading, and anything that does that has an impact. So call them friends, call some stories enemies if you want, but don't deny their influence.

Honesty is easier when you have no face and no real name. And honesty, for me, is very easy on paper.

Artists create things that point us to beauty, to truth, to God.

My dear, what in your life has ever come close to fair? That's not how this life works.

You know what he said to me just now? 'I know you.' Like he saw me, the real me, and I was just what he wanted...

I'm not guaranteed a happy ending just because I make it to the last page.

Good, fully dimensional characters let us live their lives vicariously, and bad ones tell us about the authors.

Self-protection keeps you from love, Mr. Knightley-all love. I am so sad at how I've kept them at a distance-the Muirs, Alex, Father John, Kyle, Hannah ... Anyone and everyone who has ever stood by me. I played God in our relationships. I determined their value by how much I let them in, by how much I let them determine my worth. I'm not God. And I don't need to work so hard anymore ...

Do you ever feel like there are plans for you? Not ones you make, but plans for good that will come about if you trust and remain patient?

I'll be there. I smiled. I'll be there - when you call, when you're hurt, when you're sick, when you're lonely, when life is overwhelming, when you're scared. I'll be there.

The day we forget the horror, Sam, we will repeat it. Never forget your past. It will make you less human, less than human.

Darcy's got the tempestuous masculinity and brooding looks, but Knightley is a kinder, softer man with no pretense or dissimilation.

I closed my eyes to hug him tighter and give him that elusive feeling of unconditional love and complete safety. The feeling we seek but, in this life and in this world, perhaps never quite find.

Lucy reached in her bag and pulled out the book, knowing exactly where to search. I thank my Maker, that, in the midst of judgment, he has remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto. There it was. Mercy. Grace. And just as she'd told James, fiction conveyed change and truth and was loved and digested again and again because it reflected the worst, the best, and all the moments in between of the human experience.

He reminds me of a comfortable sweater that you pull on, knowing it will keep you warm every time.

Austen really had a thing against Marys.

Whenever I doubted the saying that hate wasn't the opposite of love, I thought of Isabel's father and remembered - indifference was.

You learn drama from the Brontës; sense from Austen; social justice from Dickens; beauty from Wordsworth, Keats, and Byron; patience and perseverance from Gaskell; and don't even get me started on exercising your imagination with Carroll, Doyle, Wells, Wilde, Stoker--

You could lose yourself in a book and, paradoxically, find yourself as well.

The room was dark and crowded, and smelled like history and cheeseburgers.

Yes, Marianne. She lost her sense of right and wrong. She thought that because loving Willoughby felt good, it had to be right

All real lives hold controversy, trials, mistakes, and regrets. What matters is what you do next.

That's what books do, Maddie used to say; they are a conversation, and introduce us to ourselves and others.

We didn't talk much, and the silence hung like a silk curtain, light and lovely.

While I don't believe in love at first sight, because I think it takes more work than that, I do believe that one soul can speak to another and find an inexplicably deep connection over a short period of time, unimaginably short, and know that it will never forget that soul, that moment, or the light it emits forever.

It felt as if that moment, no matter the outcome between life and death, it was love that mattered and the only thing that could bridge a link between the two. For Andy. For Brian. For me. There were my shallow waters. The cakes? The potpies? Those came from my heart. The clothes, the face creams, and even Feast? None of it is bad, but none of it worthy of defining me or worth of defining love. And yet those were the objects of my affection, my time, my work, and my life.