Marlena Quotes

Even in these first days together, it is very clear that this feeling of mine for the stranger has trumped all the other adventures in my life. It has shuffled everything and everyone else I thought I was moving toward or away from. ~ Marlena De Blasi

Whenever I hear the word danger, I see Marlena and me staring into the mouth of that U-Haul in the winter hour between twilight and dark. Two girls full of plans, fifteen and seventeen years old in the middle of nowhere. Stop, I want to tell us. Stay right where you are, together. Don't move. But we will. We always do. The clock's already running. ~ Julie Buntin

We believed the fairy tales we told our children and we loved them beyond reason even when we were green and bungling about it. We were children loving our children. And that's who we are still. ~ Marlena De Blasi

Rather than being love-blinded, it is in love that I can see, really see. ~ Marlena De Blasi

All of Venice is tattered, resewn, achingly lovely, and like an enchantress, she disarms me, making off with the very breath of me. ~ Marlena De Blasi

They grew fat and happy
the horses, not the children, or Marlena for that matter. ~ Sara Gruen

We're all who we are endlessly. ~ Marlena De Blasi

One of us fell easily asleep, a million days left except that particular one, forever almost over, an ending that happens again and again no matter how much I don't want it to. Maybe that's all loss is. What happens, whether you like it or not. What won't let you go.
Marlena - Look. I didn't forget.
I wrote it down. ~ Julie Buntin

Some people are born empty. All manner of good deeds and patience and loving kindness can't even begin to fill them up. ~ Marlena De Blasi

Much of my crying is for joy and wonder rather than for pain. A trumpet's wailing, a wind's warm breath, the chink of a bell on an errant lamb, the smoke from a candle just spent, first light, twilight, firelight. Everyday beauty. I cry for how life intoxicates. And maybe just a little for how swiftly it runs. ~ Marlena De Blasi

I don't pretend to understand these feelings, but I'm willing to let the inexplicable sit sacred. ~ Marlena De Blasi

It was Don Paolo's birthday and all the people of the village were gathered in the piazza to celebrate him. The band played, the wine flowed, the children danced, and, as he stood for a moment alone under the pergola, a little girl approached the the beloved priest. "But Don Paolo, are you not happy?" she asked him. "Of course I am happy," he assured the little girl. "Why, then, aren't you crying? ~ Marlena De Blasi

Michigan was all lake and sky and stars, and I though back to Marlena asking me that question about dying and still agreed with the answer I'd given. There would be beauty to drowning here, to living your whole life in this place, to never knowing the uglier world outside. ~ Julie Buntin

Some say it rings by its own will, that if one arrives in Venice to its great, noble clanging, it is proof of one's Venetian soul, proof the old bell remembers one from some other time. ~ Marlena De Blasi

It's mostly readers of my books who come to be with us. The tours become an extension of the books. Guests want to see the places I write about. They want to be where we are. I guess they want also to feel what I feel. They want to step through a magic door. ~ Marlena De Blasi

Everything about this evening is both exquisite and bewildering and I can't decide if I want to go on with this dream or run back down the yellow-lit rock to the stable. But the stable door is closed. ~ Marlena De Blasi

You rob time, Fernando. How arrogant you are, taking an evening like this one as though it were some sour cherry, spitting half its flesh into the dirt. Every time you pitch yourself back into the past, you lose time. Have you so much of it to spare, my love? ~ Marlena De Blasi

I know what my job is, and I'm damned good at it."

When he snorted she came back down two steps. She came down slowly, her movements deliberate, because her own temper was much too close to the boil. "Good enough to have figured out why you've hated the sight of me since I first walked in that door. Since you understood Roarke had feelings for me. Part A was easy -- a first-year rookie could have snagged onto it. I'm a cop, and that's enough for you to hold me in contempt."

He offered a thin smile. "I've had little reason to admire those in your profession."

"Part B was tougher." She came down another step so that their eyes were level. "I thought I had that figured, too, but I didn't realize that Part B had a couple of stages. Stage one: I'm not one of the glamorous, well-bred stunners that Roarke socialized with. I haven't got the looks or the pedigree or the style to suit you."

He felt a quick tug of shame, but inclined his head. "No, you don't. He could have had anyone, his pick of the cream of society."

"But you didn't want just anyone for him, Summerset. That's stage two, and I just figured that out this morning. You resent me because I'm not Marlena. That's who you wanted for him," she said quietly as the color slipped out of his cheeks. "You hoped he'd find someone who reminded you of her, instead you got stuck with an inferior mode. Tough luck all around. ~ J.D. Robb

People who work alone know the beauty of solitude. The perhaps greater beauty of loneliness ~ Marlena De Blasi

It's the friends you can call at 4 a.m. that matter. ~ Marlena Dietrich

Then I lie down on the horse blanket and drift into a dream about Marlena that will probably cost me my soul. ~ Sara Gruen

Most crimes are connected to hunger. One hunger or another. ~ Marlena De Blasi

How strange it is, sometimes, which conversations or events stays with us while so much else melts as fast as April snow. ~ Marlena De Blasi

You will sustain your rage, using time as a defense against fear and indolence. In the great stash of defenses, time is the one least imaginative. ~ Marlena De Blasi

Do not cry for me when I'm gone, for I've lived a thousand lives in one. ~ Marlena Owens

But it all zipped by. One minute Marlena and I were up to our eyeballs, and the next thing we knew the kids were borrowing the car and fleeing the coop for college. And now, here I am. In my nineties and alone. ~ Sara Gruen

You do right by me, I'll show you a life most suckers can't even dream of. ~ Sara Gruen

They all know the truth, that there are only three subjects worth talking about. At least here in these parts," he says, "The weather, which, as they're farmers, affects everything else. Dying and birthing, of both people and animals. And what we eat - this last item comprising what we ate the day before and what we're planning to eat tomorrow. And all three of these major subjects encompass, in one way or another, philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, the physical sciences, history, art, literature, and religion. We get around to sparring about all that counts in life but we usually do it while we're talking about food, it being a subject inseparable from every other subject. It's the table and the bed that count in life. And everything else we do, we do so we can get back to the table, back to the bed. ~ Marlena De Blasi

Life is this conto, account," said the banker in him. "It's an unknown quantity of days from which one is permitted to withdraw only one precious one of them at a time. No deposits accepted. ~ Marlena De Blasi

You know I've always wanted someone to sing to me, but now I know that what I want more is to sing to you. ~ Marlena De Blasi

We accumulate pain, collect it ... We display it, stack it up into a pile, then we stack it up into a mountain, so we can climb up onto it, waiting for or demanding sympathy: "Hey, do you see how big my pain is?" ~ Marlena De Blasi

Some people ripen, some rot. ~ Marlena De Blasi