Kristy

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“If you want to know what's in motherhood for you, as a woman, then - in truth - it's nothing you couldn't get from, say, reading the 100 greatest books in human history; learning a foreign language well enough to argue in it; climbing hills; loving recklessly; sitting quietly, alone, in the dawn; drinking whisky with revolutionaries; learning to do close-hand magic; swimming in a river in winter; growing foxgloves, peas and roses; calling your mum; singing while you walk; being polite; and always, always helping strangers. No one has ever claimed for a moment that childless men have missed out on a vital aspect of their existence, and were the poorer, and crippled by it.”
― Caitlin Moran, How to Be a Woman

“THE HOUSE OF PAIN

Unto the Prison House of Pain none willingly

repair, —
The bravest who an entrance gain
Reluctant linger there,
For Pleasure, passing by that door, stays not to

cheer the sight.
And Sympathy but muffles sound and banishes the

light.

Yet in the Prison House of Pain things full of

beauty blow, —
Like Christmas-roses, which attain
Perfection 'mid the snow, —
Love, entering, in his mild warmth the darkest

shadows melt,
And often, where the hush is deep, the waft of

wings is felt.

Ah, me ! the Prison House of Pain ! — what lessons
there are bought ! —
Lessons of a sublimer strain
Than any elsewhere taught, —
Amid its loneliness and gloom, grave meanings

grow more clear,
For to no earthly dwelling-place seems God so
strangely near !”
― Florence Earle Coates

“Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives--or to find strength in a very long one.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue