Laura Amy Schlitz > Quotes

“My books promised me that life wasn’t just made up of workday tasks and prosaic things. The world is bigger and more colorful and more important than that.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz

“But I think the most important thing those books gave me was a kind of faith. My books promised me that life wasn’t just made up of workaday tasks and prosaic things. The world is bigger and more colorful and more important than that.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“You know how it is. Someone pretends to love you, and you give too much away.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, Splendors and Glooms

“I think I would rather have a cat than a sweetheart, after all. They are less trouble, and even the handsomest sweetheart is sadly lacking in fur.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“...I sometimes wonder if every living thing doesn't need kind words as much as sunshine and water.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“on the morning of the best day of her life, Maude Flynn was locked in the outhouse singing 'the Battle Hymn of the Republic”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, A Drowned Maiden's Hair

“If I had books, if I could scrape together an education, I’d have a future, whether any man ever asked me to marry him or not.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“When I behold the ocean, I know that the world isn't just the grind of small tasks and small thoughts.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“Hold your head up! Throw you shoulders back! It's the cheapest way to tell the world you're somebody!”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, A Drowned Maiden's Hair

“I quite lost myself, gazing at this work of art. . . It thrilled me, that sculpture. For one thing, it reminded me that in my new life, I may have other such experiences. I needn't always be an ignorant girl. The world will offer itself to me like a chalice brimming with immortal wine, and I will quaff from it.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“He pried Clara's arms loose and stood up, smoothing his wrinkled coat. Clara looked straight into his face. Her eyelids were red, but her gaze was like a lance. Dr. Wintermute had a sudden, uncomfortable conviction that she had seen into his soul. It was a look he was to remember often in the weeks to come.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, Splendors and Glooms

“When I behold the ocean, I know that the world isn't just the grind of small tasks and small thoughts. The world is wide and wild and grand. Someday I will sail my little bark into the great ocean of life, braving the winds and the tide. And while the waves may dwarf me, they will not belittle me, because I will be the master of my fate and the captain of my soul.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“Not having any books makes me feel empty and strained and pathetic.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“Dr. Wintermute beheld Mrs. Pinchbeck befeathered, beribboned, crinolined, corseted, frizzled, and festooned, though not wasted.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, Splendors and Glooms

“Most of the time when you laugh, it's because something is amiss - clumsy or wrong or sad - but when you laugh at a kitten, you laugh of pure joy.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz

“I think I’d like to be beautiful and heartless for a while, just to see what it’s like.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“You realize you are not alone when you write, and you start to write for the person who will read your words. I think that's a bad thing, but I'm not sure, because I do think of being an author someday, and authors have to commune with their readers.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“Even though there were too many feelings, it strikes me that having them all at once, all tangled together, is one of the most interesting things that's ever happened to me.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“And yet, if she wasn’t pretty, she didn’t know it. She spoke and walked and moved her hands as if she were bewitchingly pretty. And for some reason, it was hard to take your eyes off her. I guess a novel would have said it was the play of her features. She was lively; she was animated; her lips curved with mischief, and her small eyes sparkled. I wonder if my features ever play. I bet they don”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“and I sometimes wonder if every living thing doesn’t need kind words as much as sunshine and water.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“I'm not a feather to be tossed about.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz

“In real life, you eat the cinnamon toast, even if your heart is burning.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“Maud, listen to me. It isn't wrong to be affectionate. And it isn't funny, either.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, A Drowned Maiden's Hair

“She cried because Muffet loved her and because Hyacinth didn't.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, A Drowned Maiden's Hair

“I knew that reading that book would take me into another world — the real world, not the ordinary world of washing the dishes and mopping the floor. It would be like what Keats said about gazing through a magic casement into faery lands forlorn.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“I'd rather be impetuous than placid any day.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“Parsefall did not love fresh air. In his experience, it was apt to be cold.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz

“All three sons believed they had the right ring, but there was no proof they were right. But all three rings were precious and beautiful, because they came from the father, and the father loved all three sons.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“There’s something about Father that weakens you. It’s the choked-down anger inside him. It’s like stagnant water, heavy and murky and sickening. Whenever I have words with Father, I feel poisoned, even two or three days after.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, The Hired Girl

“It’s a mystery where your daughter’s gone, and a mystery where the other two’ve gone,”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, Splendors and Glooms