“It is my belief that with two such men in the household and no way to meet others, Emily (Bronte)had to make Heathcliff up out of thin air! And what a fine job she did. Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.”
Mary Ann Shaffer“Visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and next year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it.”
Mary Ann Shaffer“She is one of those ladies who is more beautiful at sixty than she could possibly have been at twenty. (how I hope someone says that about me someday)!”
Mary Ann Shaffer“I think you learn more if you're laughing at the same time.”
Mary Ann Shaffer“I kept trying to explain and he kept shouting until I began to cry from frustration. Then he felt remorseful, which was so unlike him and endearing that I almost changed my mind and said yes. But then I imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again.”
Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society“All his flowers have been awaiting me on my arrival. I don't know whether to feel flattered or hunted.”
Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society“But the truth is that I'm gloomy - gloomier than I ever was during the war. Everything is so broken, Sophie: the roads, the buildings, the people. Especially the people.”
Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society“Oh bless Speranza, for giving her son such a preposterous name as Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde.”
Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society“He's got that way of believing his opinion is the truth, but he's not disagreeable about it. He's too sure he's right to bother being disagreeable.”
Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society“Sorrow has rushed over the world like the waters of the Deluge, and it will take time to recede. But already, there are small islands of - hope? Happiness? Something like them, at any rate.”
Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society“I believe I am becoming pathetic. I'll go further, I believe that I am in love with a flower-growing, wood-carving quarryman/carpenter/pig farmer. In fact, I know I am. Perhaps tomorrow I will become entirely miserable at the thought that he doesn't love me back - may, even, care for Remy- but at this precise moment I am succumbing to euphoria. My head and stomach feel quite odd. ”
Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society