Madeline Moore > Madeline's Quotes

“They slept the first night on the beach, and he moved into the shack with her the next day. Packing and unpacking within a single tide. As sand creatures do.”
― Delia Owens, Where The Crawdads Sing

“I wake sometimes in the dark terrified by my life's precariousness, its thready breath. Beside me, my husband's pulse beats at his throat; in their beds, my children's skin shows every faintest scratch. A breeze would blow them over, and the world is filled with more than breezes: diseases and disasters, monsters and pain in a thousand variations. I do not forget either my father and his kind hanging over us, bright and sharp as swords, aimed at our tearing flesh. If they do not fall on us in spite and malice, then they will fall by accident or whim. My breath fights in my throat. How can I live on beneath such a burden of doom? I rise then and go to my herbs. I create something, I transform something. My witchcraft is as strong as ever, stronger. This too is good fortune. How many have such power and leisure and defense as I do? Telemachus comes from our bed to find me. He sits with me in the greensmelling darkness, holding my hand. Our faces are both lined now, marked with our years. Circe, he says, it will be all right. It is not the saying of an oracle or a prophet. They are words you might speak to a child. I have heard him say them to our daughters, when he rocked them back to sleep from a nightmare, when he dressed their small cuts, soothed whatever stung. His skin is familiar as my own beneath my fingers. I listen to his breath, warm upon the night air, and somehow I am comforted. He does not mean it does not hurt. He does not mean we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“The truth is, men make terrible pigs.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Let me say what sorcery is not: it is not divine power, which comes with a thought and a blink. It must be made and worked, planned and searched out, dug up, dried, chopped and ground, cooked, spoken over, and sung. Even after all that, it can fail, as gods do not.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Timidity creates nothing.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Fear of failure was the worst thing for any spell.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I have aged. When I look in my polished bronze mirror, there are lines upon my face. I am thickened too and my skin has begun growing loose. I cut myself with my herbs and the scars stay. Sometimes I like it. Sometimes I am vain and dissatisfied. But I do not wish myself back. Of course my flesh reaches for the earth. That is where it belongs.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“You can teach a viper to eat from your hands, but you cannot take away how much it likes to bite.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Be wary of men with something to prove.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“You can be sorry about something and not regret it,” Evelyn says.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“You have to find a job that makes your heart feel big instead of one that makes it feel small.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“She always made sure the bad was outweighed by so much good. I...well, I didn't do that for her. I made it fifty-fifty. Which is about the cruelest thing you can do to someone you love, give them just enough good to make them stick through a hell of a lot of bad.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“...do yourself a favor and learn to grab life by the balls, dear. Don’t be so tied up in trying to do the right thing when the smart thing is so painfully clear.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Do you think I'm a whore?” Harry pulled over to the side of the road and turned to me. “I think you're brilliant. I think you're tough. And I think the word whore is something ignorant people throw around when they have nothing else.

… “Isn't it awfully convenient,” Harry added, “that when men make the rules, the one thing that's looked down on the most is the one thing that would bear them the greatest threat? Imagine if every single woman on the planet wanted something in exchange when she gave up her body. You'd all be ruling the place. An armed populace. Only men like me would stand a chance against you. And that's the last thing those assholes want, a world run by people like you and me.”

I laughed, my eyes still puffy and tired from crying. “So am I a whore or not?” “Who knows?” he said. “We're all whores, really, in some way or another. At least in Hollywood.” … “But I like you this way. I like you impure and scrappy and formidable. I like the Evelyn Hugo who sees the world for what it is and then goes out there and wrestles what she wants out of it. So, you know, put whatever label you want on it, just don't change. That would be the real tragedy.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“You don't have to make yourself OK for a good mother; a good mother makes herself OK for you.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“No … because they are just husbands. I am Evelyn Hugo. And anyways, I think once people know the truth, they will be much more interested in my wife.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Which is about the cruelest thing you can do to someone you love, give them just enough good to make them stick through a hell of a lot of bad.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“I think being yourself—your true, entire self—is always going to feel like you’re swimming upstream.”

“Yeah,” she said. “But if the last few years with you have been any indication, I think it also feels like taking your bra off at the end of the day.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“If you are intolerable, let me be the one to tolerate you," I said, and then I kissed her and tasted the lemon juice on her lips.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“The daily peace of loving plainly.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“charisma is “charm that inspires devotion.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Praise is just like an addiction. The more you get it, the more of it you need just to stay even.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“I'd told him I was someone else, and then I started getting angry that he couldn't see who I really was.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“No one goes around throwing caution to the wind unless the wind is blowing their way.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“I can survive it. I’d rather survive it than never feel it.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“I’m simply saying they were all too happy to believe the lie I was selling them. And of course, that’s the easiest lie to tell, one you know the other person desperately wants to be true.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Why should my low tolerance be your problem?"
"I want everything about you to be my problem," I said.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Autumn leaves don't fall, they fly. They take their time and wander on this their only chance to soar.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“If anyone would understand loneliness, the moon would.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing