Mary Ann Quotes

All I could do was scream, "How dare you! What have you DONE?! Put my books back! ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

My life is cozy, but I'm starting to let myself think I want something wet and aching stabbed through it. I want something substantial. I want to gorge myself. Excess. ~ Mary Ann Rivers

I look at my snow boots, counting the grommets while I try to name what I'm feeling. This has been a problem lately. It's never been a problem before - I've been happy, and sad, and frustrated.
I've felt angry and sentimental.
I've loved. I've been loved back.
Maintaining long moments of wordless eye contact with the man who is supposed to make me feel okay about going blind, noticing all the exact shades of blue and how I can always tell he's going to smile before he does, pretending I'm not responding to some tension between us?
I'm a little exhausted. ~ Mary Ann Rivers

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

I miss the feeling that we understood one another, but I begin to think that was only my delusion all along. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

People don't know how chickens can turn on you, but they can
just like mad dogs. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

I have gone to [this bookshop] for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadn't known I wanted. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

If a friend of mine in Paris had confessed that he was in love with a Simon or a Peter, I would have compared notes with him on my love for Mary Ann. Gender in matters of love struck me as of no greater consequence than flavours in ice-cream. I imagine the absence of religion in my upbringing was one factor that had allowed this belief to survive. Perhaps, too, I had a natural openness in the matter. At any rate, it was completely unwittingly that I had disregarded this fundamental polarity of North American society. ~ Yann Martel

What nationality are you Mary-Ann can't tell you look like a mixed breed mut ~ Pamela Martin

I did not want to spend my time reading about people who never were, doing things they never did. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

words. "Hell no! Sarah took Davie to Bingo. My old man's working four to twelve." "Where's your sister?" "Let's get one thing straight," Stanley grumbled. "She's not my sister!" "Okay, smart ass. Where's your cousin?" "She's upstairs. And she's not my cousin either. She's not related to me at all!" JD took the joint from Stanley's thick fingers and ~ Mary Ann Gouze

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

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

Just sit right back
And you'll hear a tale
A tale of a fateful trip,
That started from this tropic port,
Aboard this tiny ship.
The mate was a mighty sailin' lad,
The Skipper brave and sure,
Five passengers set sail that day,
For a three hour tour,
A three hour tour.


The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed.
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The Minnow would be lost.
The Minnow would be lost.

The ship set ground on the shore
Of this uncharted desert isle
With Gilligan,
The Skipper too.
The millionaire
And his wife,
The movie star,
The professor and Mary Ann,
Here on Gilligan's Isle.



So this is the tale of our castaways,
They're here for a long long time.
They'll have to make the best of things,
It's an uphill climb.

The first mate and his Skipper too
Will do their very best,
To make the others comf'terble
In their tropic island nest.

No phone, no lights, no motor car,
Not a single luxury
Like Robinson Crusoe
It's primitive as can be.

So join us here each week my friends,
You're sure to get a smile,
From seven stranded castaways
Here on Gilligan's Isle! ~ Sherwood Schwartz

Have you noticed there are some people
Americans especially
who seem untouched by the war, or at least, unmangled by it? I don't mean to imply that Mark was a shirker
he was in their Air Corps
but he's simply not sunk under it. And when I'm with him, I feel untouched by the war, too. It's an illusion, I know it is, and truthfully, I'd be ashamed of myself if the war hadn't touched me. But it's forgivable to enjoy myself a little
isn't it? ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

I could tell you more about reading and how it perked up our spirits while the Germans were here. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

If there is Predestination, then God is the devil. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

All who are genuinely committed to the advancement of women can and must offer a woman or a girl who is pregnant, frightened, and alone a better alternative than the destruction of her own unborn child ~ Mary Ann Glendon

I do a lot of races for the cure for breast cancer. ~ Mary Ann Mobley

I did not throw 'The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation' at the audience. I threw it at the elocution mistress. I meant to cast it at her feet, but I missed. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

You can purchase my silence with torrid details, you know. ~ 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

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

I never met a man half so true as a dog. ~ 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

I tried to protest, but Sam turned his back ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Then Susan suggested a new dress. I reminded her that the Queen was very happy wearing her 1939 wardrobe, so why shouldn't I be? She said the Queen doesn't need to impress strangers - but I do. I felt like a traitor to crown and country; now decent woman has new clothes - but I forgot that the moment I saw myself in the mirror. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Spencer's other grandmother, Mary Ann Olpin Woolley, was from England ~ The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints

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

When I got up this morning the sea was full of sun pennies - and now it all seems to be covered in lemon scrim. Writers ought to live far inland or next to the city dump, if they are ever to get any work one. Or perhaps they need to be stronger-minded than I am. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

We're strong for each other ! It's what women do!" said Zelda to Pearl
"He Counts Their Tears" by Mary Ann D'Alto ~ Mary Ann D'Alto

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

Did you know that your mouth, your skin, is so soft? All week, every time I've thought about it, my hands feel like they're buzzing. I love your hair. I love that it's short and so when I put my fingers through it, I can feel your whole nape bust out in goose pimples. ~ Mary Ann Rivers

If I'm broken, the break will be clean and easily mended. If he breaks, I'm not sure if there will be enough pieces to approximate. I can afford to go along with what he thinks will protect him. I can have this, and I can give him what he thinks he needs, even if he may deserve better. ~ Mary Ann Rivers

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

I'm home about two days a month, and on those I have to pack. ~ Mary Ann Mobley

He is so shy, Juliet. He always has been-I don't think anybody's ever been in love with him, or him with anybody before, so he'd not know the right thing to do about it. It'd be just like him to hide away mementos and never say a word. I despair for him, I do. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

I think you learn more if you're laughing at the same time. ~ 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

Juliet, none of your margin notes! Sophie, dear, don't let her drink coffee while she reads. And off we'd go with new books to read. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Four Years Since

Today I remember the day but to be honest it is everyday
That day then, the moment then, when you left us all here
More than just a father I call, a gem I treasure, that day I lost
We four girls, my mom's other half, my brothers best bud, our first love, we lost
Holding the key to the future called You, I stand still facing the gate of the past

Why I keep on asking the same question?
Why you? Why out of all those people? Why too soon? Why?
It has been years, 4 years exact, it seems like yesterday yes
You were taken too soon, words aren't enough to express
It's not fair, but who I am to blame, who Am I to question?

My eyes express longing you cannot fathom
From my open mouth my broken heart pours
Words that try to capture that image so faint
He is the picture I could not ever paint
Yet our memories is in the solid bowl being kept

Spare me even just 5 or 10 minutes of your presence
To build up this longing I feel, I am asking
I want to hear your nag; I want to hear your laugh
In my dreams please see me there
I won't get afraid nor get frightened

Like a waterfalls my tears keeps on flowing
Like a bubble your voice keeps on vanishing
He, his shadow, he himself starts from fading
I don't want to forget you please stop time from ticking
I don't want to open my eyes don't wake me from dreaming

You are t ~ Venancio Mary Ann

It was not a windy day, my hair always looks like that. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Christian Fiction is like a parable. The story is made up, but the truth is brought to life. Enjoy the story, but savor the truth. ~ Mary Ann Brantley

In 1962 I was diagnosed with this incurable disease. ~ Mary Ann Mobley

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

I am no proof against compliments, especially compliments about my writing. I'll be delighted to dine with you. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Yes, I believe the greatest blessing any one can have is to be a failure, this is the first step towards the success, ~ Mary Ann Templeton

All his flowers have been awaiting me on my arrival. I don't know whether to feel flattered or hunted. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Do you arrange your books alphabetically? (I hope not.) ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

He's always had more than his fair share of what we call cheek and what Americans call can-do spirit. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Then i imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again. ~ 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

It's called 'The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892-1935'. They let a man named Yeats make the choosings. They shouldn't have. Who is he - and what does he know about verse?
I hunted through that book for poems by Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon. There weren't any - not one. And do you know why not? Because Mr Yeats said - he said, "I deliberately chose NOT to include any poems from World War I. I have a distaste for them. Passive suffering is not a theme for poetry. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

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

It was so kind of you to write to me about your experiences during the Occupation. At the war's end, I, too, promised myself that I had done with talking about it. I had talked and lived war for six years, and I was longing to pay attention to something - anything - else. But that is like wishing I were someone else. The war is now the story of our lives, and there's no subtracting it. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

I much prefer whining to counting my blessings. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Poor Mary Ann! She gave the guy an inch and now he thinks he's a ruler. ~ Mae West

i have siezed the day, and the night too. -Juliet- ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

I have never had a first kiss like this. Is it that he's a stranger? So beautiful? If so, I am ruined for anything but beautiful strangers for the rest of my life. He is so hungry seeming, so explicit with his lips and teeth from every angle he tips my head into. I can feel my heart pounding every place ... ~ Mary Ann Rivers

Oh bless Speranza, for giving her son such a preposterous name as Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Don't profane yourself, or the Biodag Dubh.
Oh, Mary Ann. Me and the Beedak Doo are just fine. ~ Kendare Blake

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

Literalists of the imagination ~ Mary Ann Moore

In a good mood I call my hair Chestnut with Gold Glints. In a bad mood, I call it mousy brown ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

His writings have made me his friend. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Ulcerative colitis can be cured by the operation, but you cannot cure Crohn's disease. ~ Mary Ann Mobley

If all we've got to look forward to is disloyalty and treachery, why do we even make friends?"
"Again, human nature. Hoping for the best is what drives us. ~ Gena Showalter

Grandpa, that's something I never am." I asked him, "What's that?" And he said, "Lonesome in my spirits." Eli to Eben ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

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

Same way a serial killer chooses his weapons, only Aaron was the serial killer of souls. ~ Mary Ann D'Alto

I should take his kisses with me and go. But with a seeping, resolute calm, I decide to keep him. I am not losing these Wednesdays, even if I can't have anything else. ~ Mary Ann Rivers

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 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

Remy watched the sea breathe in and out. Then she said, "It would have been better for her not to have such a heart." Yes, but worse for the rest of us. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

But I also want her to know that Mary Ann and I are best friends and have been forever. ~ Laurie B. Friedman

Miss X has always been a ditherer
she was a ten month baby and has not improved in any material way since then. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

Thousands of those men and boys died here, and I have recently learned that their inhuman treatment was the intended policy of Himmler. He called his plan Death by Exhaustion, and he implemented it. Work them hard, don't waste valuable foodstuffs on them, and let them die. They could, and would, always be replaced by new slave workers from Europe's Occupied countries. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

If I wanted, I could choose to make my life a place that Brian could step into. He didn't have any room to move, but ... ~ Mary Ann Rivers

No picture necessary. I'd recognize you, see you, anywhere. I could fill my life with you. ~ Mary Ann Rivers

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

I have seen doctors, in good faith, leave patients on steroids for years, thinking they are doing right. A friend of mine was on steroids for so long, she has severe osteoporosis. ~ Mary Ann Mobley

Finding your voice is like finding your self. ~ Mary Ann Taylor-Hall

Treat a dog right and he'll treat you right ... Cats is different, but I never held it against them. ~ 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

What a blight that woman is. Do you happen to know why? I lean toward a malignant fairy at her christening. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

If I were there, Carrie, I would need to feel how soft the skin on the inside of your thighs is, first, how hot it is at that place where your thigh curves into your pussy. I love that place. I would kiss it first, but then lick it, inhale you. ~ Mary Ann Rivers

Redd up the ship! ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

I get about 25 letters a month, and I answer every one of them. ~ Mary Ann Mobley

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

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

I thought I was in love (that's the pathetic part - my idea of being in love). ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

We are going to find, I think, several different kinds of Crohn's disease. ~ Mary Ann Mobley

He's got that way of believing his opinion is the truth, but he's not disagreeable about it. He's too sure he's right to bother being disagreeable. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

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

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

Now, about Markham V. Reynolds (Junior). Your questions regarding that gentleman are very delicate, very subtle, very much like being smacked in the head with a mallet. Am I in love with him? What kind of a question is that? It's a tuba among the flutes, and I expect better of you. The first rule of snooping is to come at it sideways - when you began writing me dizzy letters about Alexander, I didn't ask if you were in love with him, I asked what his favorite animal was. And your answer told me everything I needed to know about him - how many men would admit that they loved ducks? (This brings up an important point: I don't know what Mark's favorite animal is. I doubt it's a duck.) ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

She was showing me her treasures, Sophie
her eyes did not leave my face once. We were both so solemn, and I, for once, didn't start crying; I just held out my arms. She climbed right into them and under the covers with me
and went sound asleep. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

It is becoming plain that our liberal regime of equality and personal freedom depends, more than most theorists of liberalism have been willing to admit, on the existence and support of certain social assumptions and practices: the belief that each and every human being possesses great and inherent value, the willingness to respect the rights of others even at the cost of some disadvantages to one's self, the ability to defer some immediate benefits for the sake of long-range goals, and a regard for reason-giving and civility in public discourse. ~ Mary Ann Glendon

The witch's hair was too short and too dark for blond. She wasn't sure if that relieved her or disturbed her.
Riley had immediately begun his interrogation, and it had gone something like this:
Riley: Where is the meeting between your kind and Aden Stone supposed to take place?
Witch: Go suck yourself.
Riley: Maybe later. Meeting?
Witch: Enjoy death.
Riley: I have once already. Now, decide to talk or lose a body part.
Witch: May I recommend a finger?
Riley: Sure. After I take one of your very necessary hands. ~ Gena Showalter