Favorite Lines & Quotes

• I look in this mirror and recognise myself less now than when I was a child. I suppose that happens when you've grown up and still don’t understand your place in the world.
• Gossip is as catching as the plague ever was.
• I walked longingly past The Dalliance today, St. Crispian’s Bookshop. I did not go in. There are realities we must face, an empty purse being one of them. 
• It’s a relief. To have such crisp, clean days spread out before me. 
• Rain, dismal enough to be cosy.
• Act for one’s own good or be crushed by the uncertainties of the future, is the motto I live by. I admit that adopting that motto is somewhat daunting just now.
• It represents regret and hope, this bookshelf. It is folly and experience.
• I was rattled, and the uncertainty forced my emotions into a wild place as I walked home.
• How was it possible for someone to suddenly be lost to this world?
• It was such a blessed relief to laugh despite it all… I think tomorrow will be better.
• But my true love is the evening walk, that last hour of daylight that has its way with sunlight, shadow, and soul.
• I have only just finished being subjugated to the capricious morals of an old woman, 
• I wanted Latin and Greek and all kinds of histories. I wanted science and theology and language and art. I did not wish to sew cushions all day. I did not wish to dance and sing.
• I realised that there are stories in the Old Testament more fantastical than any of Grimms’ tale.
• I want you to experience them when you're a little older, because the words will be richer for the mite of your own experience. 
• I do not blame myself. I had no true guidance. I went off the facts as I saw them. I wanted more than what most girls were being offered. I wanted to learn about this world. I wanted to leave school armed with a mind full of knowledge. And if I had to sacrifice my father’s library so that I might live an entire life with the right start, I would do.
• But I refuse to blame myself for my choice. I could not have known.
• Why does life give such a decision to a girl of only thirteen?
• I took an early walk to consider my blessed fate. I am a responsible young woman. I am not foolish, nor ignorant. 
• Sunshine, brilliant and inviting. The weather outside is quite nice as well. I walked up Sterling Street and around Baron’s Square in the late afternoon, admiring the white pillars and wrought iron fences that guard the sleepy spring rose shrubs. The daffodils are waning, but there were some tulips.
• The Reason being I am doubly cursed. My tongue is quick while my reading is moderate, tempered, erring on the more labourious of paces.
• Most times what is amusing in my head is only that, in my head alone.
• …hoping my appointment would distract me from my woes.
• Unwilling to lose myself again in nothing days as I’d done after his death, I forced myself to loosely follow my routine.
• Isn’t humility to be rewarded? Are not the meek to inherit the earth?
• What a pig-headed, two-faced, guttersnipe thing to have done! He is despicable. He is cowardly! He ought to be forever, forever in prison! Let him be stoned on Whereabouts Lane! He thinks he has seen me at my worst? Ha! Fear, Archibald Flat! For Emma M. Lion is an avenging angel more terrible than you can imagine. SCOUNDREL! ROTTEN VILLAIN
• “And now she'll know better than to be such a fool.”
• I will relish every page, but I will take time. I will read them through slowly, stretching the delight as far as I can.
• This is where I will begin, on an enchanted island free from the worries of this world.
• I said, “Maxwell, what do you think it will be like?” He answered back, “Well, Lion, I can’t rightly say, but I do hope I know better what to do with that one than I do with the one I’ve got at present.”
• And once I’d recovered—not from the bitter truth, but from thinking it would take me down with him.
• While there are many things beyond our control, I’ve always thought the cruellest is that we mortals are not told when our last glance is just that.
• There were dark clouds gathering in the south, although the sun shone over my piece of London. I thought of Gonzalo in the first pages of The Tempest, who answers when he’s told to get off the deck and allow the sailors room to do their work in the storm, “Nay, good, be patient.” To which the Boatswain replies, “When the sea is!”  I don’t know why the words repeated themselves in my mind. Perhaps that is what I feel about my precarious place in life. Be patient, says every voice of reason. When the sea is! I wish to yell back. Until my world feels solid beneath my feet, my life feels attacked by the rush and tumble of every uncertain wave. And this stranger who has now washed upon our shore makes me feel both melancholy and impatient. I cannot understand why.