Pam Jenoff > Quotes

“Create a story of which you will be proud.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Lost Girls of Paris

“Why are we so hard on one another? I wonder. Hadn’t the world already given us challenges enough?”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“We cannot change who we are. Sooner or later we will all have to face ourselves.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“The truth is sometimes the very opposite from what you expect it to be.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Lost Girls of Paris

“Never assume that you know the mind of another.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“But the truth was when it came to grief, each person was an island, alone.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Lost Girls of Paris

“I'm so sorry. I love you. I never could have hurt you.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Kommandant's Girl

“Sometimes our forever life does not last as long as we think”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“There is so little one can be certain of these days . . . But finding a hand to hold while we walk this path makes even the most difficult of times better and the strangest of villages home . . . Once I thought my life was over . . . I never thought I would find happiness again . . . And then I met you and it all changed. You made me believe again that good things were possible. I love you.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“Why is he being so nice? He is friendly--too friendly. No one is nice just for the sake of it these days, not unless he wants something.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“You love the people they were before, before all the awfulness that made them do this thing.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“I wonder what he sees, a chapter from a book I have never read.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always
be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Lost Girls of Paris

“Though no one speaks of it, I sometimes wonder if we are marching toward extinction with each performance, too busy dancing and flying through the air to see it.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“No man is worth the whole world.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“You know, when you were little and you got hurt or scared, I could make it all better with a hug or treat. But when your children get older, it becomes less and less easy to heal their wounds.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Lost Girls of Paris

“And Ruth said, 'Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“If you can’t let go of that fear of making the wrong decision, you will never be able to take the chances you must take to live life fully.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Ambassador's Daughter

“Conversations in French bubble around me like a long-forgotten perfume I am desperate to inhale. Familiar words trickle back, first in a stream then a river, though I've scarcely heard them in half a century.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“And once out, Eleanor thought silently, you can’t put it back any more than returning a mist of perfume to a bottle once it has been sprayed.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Lost Girls of Paris

“I don't. We each have free will. There may be higher purpose, but the actual path each of us takes to get there, and whether we choose to accept it at all, is up to us." She turns to me. "If you can't let go of that fear of making the wrong decision, you will never be able to take the chances you must take to live life fully.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Ambassador's Daughter

“Krakow the city of Kings, was no longer mine. I had become a foreigner in the place i had always called home”
― pam Jenoff

“Gerda sends Astrid flying back, then swings to her own board. Astrid soars now like a rider taming a wild beast, bending the trapeze to her own will. She spins by her ankles, by a lone knee, barely touching the bar to which I always cling fast. Gerda watches Astrid with disinterest, almost distaste. She and the other women do not like Astrid. Within days of arriving, I heard the whispers: they resent Astrid for returning and taking her spot at the top of the aerial act while they had worked for years, and for coupling up with Peter, one of the few eligible men the war had left. The girls at the home were much the same, sniping and whispering behind each other’s backs. Why are we so hard on one another? I wonder. Hadn’t the world already given us challenges enough? But if Astrid notices their coldness, she doesn’t seem to mind. Or perhaps she just doesn’t have need for any of them. She certainly doesn’t need me”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“he says at last, bidding me good evening as though it were”
― Pam Jenoff, The Kommandant's Girl

“There have been circuses from the times of the Romans and Greeks, our traditions centuries old. We had survived the Middle Ages, the Napoleonic Wars, the Great War. We would survive this, too.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“You love the people they were before, below all the awfulness that made them do this thing, you know?”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“Not all Americans talk like me. The states in America are kind of like your countries over here,”
― Pam Jenoff, The Diplomat's Wife

“Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Diplomat's Wife

“His kind of courage was boundless, though, and he would not have turned away a person in need, whether a star performer or a simple laborer or a child such as Theo with no skills at all. It was not about the circus or family connections, but human decency. Herr”
― Pam Jenoff, The Orphan's Tale

“You kept this from me.” “I didn’t include you,” he corrected. As if that made a difference.”
― Pam Jenoff, The Lost Girls of Paris