Mary Ann In Autumn Quotes

A pristine landscape was perfection itself; it was only when you added people that everything changed. ~ Armistead Maupin

How does he make you feel?"
"Right now? Off balance. A little embarrassed. Worried. Like I don't know myself."
"Yeah. Exactly. Carrie, would you like to know this part of yourself?"
"Huh?"
"The part of yourself that opens herself up to a man based on nothing but a little intuition that there is goodness in him and that he kisses like the world's ending. Do you want to know that part? Because you don't have to. You're right. Your life is a nice one - there are no guarantees, but it's on the right path to stay a nice one. Brian is not on this path. ~ Mary Ann Rivers

Social historians of the future no doubt will be amused by the fact that we late-twentieth-century Americans found it acceptable to discuss publicly in detail the most intimate aspects of personal life, while maintaining an almost prudish reserve concerning the political significance of family life. ~ Mary Ann Glendon

Isola doesn't approve of small talk and believes in breaking the ice by stomping on it. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers
booksellers really are a special breed. No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no one in his right mind would want to own one
the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it
along with first dibs on the new books. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Night-time train travel is wonderful again! No standing in the corridors for hours, no being shunted off for a troop train to pass, and above all, no black-out curtains. All the windows we passed were lighted, and I could snoop once more. I missed it so terribly during the war. I felt as if we had all turned into moles scuttling along in our separate tunnels. I don't consider myself a real peeper-they go in for bedrooms, but it's families in sitting rooms or kitchens that thrill me. I can imagine their entire lives from a glimpse of bookshelves, or desks, or lit candles, or bright sofa cushions. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

The problem is that stepping away from Brian, leaving him standing under that pergola on Wednesday, is no longer enough to leave behind how he made me feel in that hour. I could leave him there, we could part as strangers, but God, I know that I would look for him. He would live in my peripheral vision, a ghost nudging me to turn and look behind me, only to find a spot that is emptier than empty ~ Mary Ann Rivers

Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person's name suddenly pops up everywhere you go? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Mr. Simpless, my parson friend, calls it Grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and "fruitfulness" is drawn in. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

She is often the broken-winged one, who does everything all wrong until people realize she's been doing it ... pretty right all along. She's the poor girl who never dressed right, who had torn hose, and they were all baggy around her ankles. She's the Raggedy Ann of the sophisticated world, who pulls it out at the last minute, flies by the seat of her pants, cackling all the way home. She is the late bloomer, the late start, the autumn bush, the winter holly. She is Baubo, all the classical Greek goddesses. She is the old girl who still blushes, and laughs, and dances. She's the truth teller, maybe that people hate to hear, but they learn to listen to. She is not dumb and in some ways is not shrewd. She works on passion, and the doll in her pocket, and the intuition that leads her into and through all the world. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

He had no imagination either-fatal for one engaged in child-rearing ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

He didn't say much at our first meeting - nor at any of our meetings since, come to think of it - but left him into a room, and everyone in it seems to breathe a sigh of relief. I have never in my life had that effect on anyone; I can't imagine why not. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Put your hand on your heart to keep it from flying off to the lovely magical literary island Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows have created in The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. This novel is a delightful mix of fine writing, powerful emotions, glorious settings and amazing characters who deal with life in a way that will have readers falling in love on every single page. ~ Kris Radish

My neighbour Evangeline Smythe is going to have twins in June. She is none too happy about it, so I am going to ask her to give one of them to me ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Would you like to marry me?
I'm in love with you, so I thought I'd ask.
- Juliet Ashton to Dawnsey Adams ~ Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

I would need ... daisy love, you know, pretty love, sweet love that nonetheless was ubiquitous in roadside ditches in the summertime, and instead I would get orchid love. Love that needed misting and replanting and pruning and fertilizing and died anyway. ~ Mary Ann Rivers

My worries travel around in my head on their well worn path ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

It's a real lightning bolt, this Science of Phrenology. I've found out more in the last three days than I knew in my whole life before. Mrs. Guilbert has always been a nasty one, but now I know that she can't help it - she's got a big pit in her Benevolence spot. She fell in the quarry when she was a girl, and my guess is she cracked her Benevolence and was never the same since. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

As to that Sidney, he sounds a very fine man - but bossy. It's a failing common in men. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Look," said Mary Ann evenly, "if I think you're really attractive, there must be plenty of men in this town who feel the same way."
"Yeah," said Michael ruefully. "Size queens."
"Oh, don't be silly!" Sometimes Michael was sensitive about the dumbest things. He's at least five nine, thought Mary Ann. That's tall enough for anybody. ~ Armistead Maupin

With many countries on the verge of redefining a basic social institution, What Is Marriage? issues an urgent call for full deliberation of what is at stake. The authors make a compelling secular case for marriage as a partnership between a man and a woman, whose special status is based on society's interest in the nurture and education of children. ~ Mary Ann Glendon

I gave a talk on the Brontë girls once when it was my turn to speak. I'm sorry I can't send you my notes on Charlotte and Emily -- I used them to kindle a fire in my stove-- there being no other paper in the house. I'd already burnt up my tide tables, the Book of Revelation and the story about Job. (From Isola Pribby to Juliet) ~ Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

One woman called me after her grandmother had died. She explained that she had taken some of her grandmother's furniture. They had put Grandma's rocker in the family room, and even when it was empty, that chair rocked back and forth a mile a minute. The woman also mentioned that whenever she walked past the room when the chair was moving, she could smell her grandmother's signature perfume, a distinctive scent called Evening in Paris. Given all the signs, I couldn't blame the woman for thinking that the ghost of her grandmother had moved in and reclaimed her rocking chair, but I did not pick up on any earthbound spirits in her home. I reassured the woman that I believed her grandmother had crossed over into the Light and was fine, although it was possible that she just stopped by to visit from time to time. ~ Mary Ann Winkowski

Magic comes from freedom, from openness, from willingness. Play burbles up from the yes that lives in the dark space, the now, the gimme, the yearning urge to be and belong and become.
Our joy lives in the dizzying impulse we all learn to stifle as we grow - the voice of yes that tells us to close our eyes on the swings so we can feel the earth fall away beneath us, to lie in the grass with the sun warming our faces until we're certain that it's spinning, it's really spinning, and we're all spinning with it.
I told Cal that the dark space is light, and it is, but it is also play. To be at play is to release the light. ~ Mary Ann Rivers

I suppose I do have a suitor, but I'm not really used to him yet. He's terribly charming and he plies me with delicious meals, but I sometimes think I prefer suitors in books rather than right in front of me. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

But no one said a word, because people hardly ever mention the very things that occur right in front of them. ~ Mary Ann D'Alto

(I love Mary Anne dearly, but she was no help. She still thinks you score touchdowns in baseball.) ~ Ann M. Martin

You are a man without a heart, Dr. Leddell.
And you, Mary Cooper, are a meddler. A woman can be forgiven for many transgressions but not that.
I have been called worse. And by people I hold in more esteem than you.
Ha! I pity the poor man unfortunate enough to marry you someday. He writes his own ticket to hell.
If he does, then I'll make that hell as pleasant a place for him as I know how. But I won't deceive him and tell him it's heaven, then stoke the fires behind his back and cover it all with the scent of lilacs. ~ Ann Rinaldi

Does it even give thee pause, that men used to have a soul
not by hearsay alone, or as a figure of speech; but as a truth
that they knew, and acted upon! Verily it was another world
then ... but yet it is a pity we have lost the tidings of our
souls ... we shall have to go in search of them again, or worse
in all ways shall befall us.
Thomas Carlyle ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

I will meet you on Wednesdays at noon in Celebration Park. Kissing only. I won't touch you below the shoulders. You can touch me anywhere. No dating, no hookups. I will meet with you for as long as you meet me, so if you miss a Wednesday we part as strangers ... ~ Mary Ann Rivers

Women like poetry. A soft word in their ears and they melt - a grease spot on the grass. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

You were the first thing I had asked for, just for me, in a long, long time. ~ Mary Ann Rivers

There was Isola in a mad hat and a purple shawl pinned with a glittering brooch. She was smiling fixedly in the wrong direction and I loved her instantly. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

I grew up in the church, and I feel very strongly about it. ~ Mary Ann Mobley

And down the street―I'm not averting my eyes now―a man in a patched jumper is painting the door to his house sky blue. Two small boys, who have been walloping one another with sticks, are begging him to let them help. He is giving them a tiny brush apiece. So―perhaps there is an end to war. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

The one thing I have wanted to stay away from is the steroids. When I had an attack two years ago in my home state of Mississippi, they put me on steroids, thinking they were doing the right thing, and I had a violent reaction. ~ Mary Ann Mobley