Menna Van Praag Quotes

If you get a chance you should marry an archaeologist. I don't suppose there are too many to go around, but it's the best sort of husband to have. The older a woman gets, the more he's interested in her.

Do you know where he went?

Too much analysis kills a thing. Art is created from passion and inspires passion. And passion is beyond reason. Don't you think?

When you follow your heart you allow miraculous possibilities to unfold.

She still hasn't cried because to stay in shock feels safer, it keeps a distance between her and the thing she's trying to pretend hasn't happened.

I'm as wrong about life as anyone, but I'm rarely wrong about art, she said.

Unfortunately most magicians are immune to their own magic. We see behind the veil, we live inside the nuts and bolts, the element of surprise is lost on us. But we can help each other.

book brings her comfort still, now soothing different pains, a literary safety blanket Alba can wrap around her fingers and hold until she forgets all the things she wants to forget. Few other novels have been able to offer similar protection against poisoned memories,

She is no longer a woman of moderation. She is illuminated. She is fire and ice. She is passion, excitement and joy.

Do you ever want to run away?" "Sometimes." Milly laughed. "But I also know that not everything I want every moment will actually make me happy.

Amandine Bisset was so passionate for Eliot Walker that tiny silver sparks flew from her fingertips when she touched him. When they made love her whole body filled with white light so bright Amandine believed she might explode.

Now you're discovering the great secret of great writing: one line of true feeling is worth a thousand pages of clever thinking.

False love is just wanting someone else, but true love is wanting someone else to be happy.

I love chocolate cake for breakfast," Peggy stalls, "it sets me up for the day. A little decadence is good for the soul." She's been eating more cake than usual, lately. Impending death does have compensations after all, then, if only chocolate-covered ones.

It's already long past midnight, but she won't sleep or stop until it's done, because the air is always thicker with magic, faith and possibility at night.

It takes great courage and determination, to keep looking for light in all the darkness of life.

It's not just the books Alba craves, it's standing inside a place that houses millions of them. Libraries are Alba's churches, and the university library, containing one edition of every book ever published in England, is her cathedral.

I can't trust anyone who won't take real cream, or real sugar.

I can say this: don't give up. Not on love but, more important still, not on you. Never let yourself believe that you are unlovable or flawed in any way. You deserve to be loved. You deserve kind words and an unwavering eye.

There's as much chance of me leaving this kitchen," Stella says, "as you putting down a book.

Noa Sparrow has never been much liked by people and she doesn't much care. That isn't strictly true, of course.

architecture to spiritually uplift and thought it was a very bad idea to build functional, uninspired blocks of flats that would depress both their inhabitants and society at large. And,

It's a great shame, she thinks, that the heart cannot feel joy without also feeling pain, that it cannot know love without also knowing loss.

The only way to stop hurting other people is to stop hurting yourself.

Sometimes acts of faith are called for in life.

Etta grins, compliments swallowed when she sees they're clearly not required.

In my experience even inanimate objects have a will of their own, and they won't be found until they want to be, until they're good and ready, she says.

When is cake ever for hunger? It's for flavor and, in this case, comfort.

I know that a heart can hold on for a lifetime, hoping for the impossible, loving, wanting what it will never have.

You're one of life's magicians. You simply haven't realized it yet.

The woman is scared, wearing her self-confidence like perfume: a heavy, sultry scent to distract onlookers from the broken, blackened pieces of herself she wants no one else to see.

If she can't achieve that, something truly brilliant, then what's the point in living at all? Because in her family, being mediocre, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, simply isn't allowed.

It's always best to feel fulfilled first, before finding a man. Then you'll know the value of yourself, and you'll hold the key to your own happiness. So you won't turn into a vulnerable, needy, emotional mess the minute you fall in love.

And, like most people, you're too scared, stubborn or stupid to give yourself what you need until you're shaken awake by something.

As the thick liquid slips down her throat and into her belly, Alba starts to feel warm and soft, as if the kitchen has just hugged her. And, after a few minutes she isn't scared to tell the truth anymore. At least a little bit of truth.