Sarah Rudkin > Sarah Rudkin's Quotes

“Maybe we just need to appreciate that many aspects of life— and the people we love—will always be a mystery. Because without mystery, there is no magic.”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“Instead of constantly asking ourselves the question of why we're here, maybe we should be savoring the simpler truth: We are here.”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“The truth is, grief neve really goes away. Someone told me once that it's like a bag that you always carry - it starts out as large as a suitcase, and as the years go by, it might reduce to the size of a purse, but you carry it forever. I know it probably sounds cliched, but it helped me realize that I didn't need to ever get over it completely.”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“It frustrated me that society. was so determined to quantify grief, as if time could erase the potency of love.”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“while a mother who miscarries might not have ever had the chance to hold that child, they had plenty. of time to love them, to dream and hope for them. And that means their grief is twofold - they're not just grieving the child, but the life they never got to experience. Who are we to tell anyone their pain isn't worthy?”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“It’s easy to glamorize the path you didn’t take.”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“Intelligence will only get you so far in life... And the same can be said for wit and charm. But two things will serve you better than any others."...

"What are they?"

"Infinite curiosity and sense of observation.”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“Who are we to tell anyone their pain isn't worthy?”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“... most of us are guilty of that with our loved ones. We get stuck in a routine and we look at them as we've always looked at them, without seeing them for the person they've become or the person they strive to be. What a terrible thing to do to someone you love.”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“When the day shall come that we do part," he said softly, and turned to look at me, "if my last words are not 'I love you'-ye'll ken it was because I didna have time.”
― Diana Gabaldon

“I will find you," he whispered in my ear. "I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you - then that is my punishment, which I have earned for my crimes. For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is the one thing that shall lie in the balance. When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest."

His voice dropped, nearly to a whisper, and his arms tightened around me.

Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber

“Ye are Blood of my Blood, and Bone of my Bone,
I give ye my Body, that we Two might be One.
I give ye my Spirit, 'til our Life shall be Done.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Outlander

“Because I wanted you." He turned from the window to face me. "More than I ever wanted anything in my life," he added softly.

I continued staring at him, dumbstruck. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn't this. Seeing my openmouthed expression, he continued lightly. "When I asked my da how ye knew which was the right woman, he told me when the time came, I'd have no doubt. And I didn't. When I woke in the dark under that tree on the road to Leoch, with you sitting on my chest, cursing me for bleeding to death, I said to myself, 'Jamie Fraser, for all ye canna see what she looks like, and for all she weighs as much as a good draft horse, this is the woman'"

I started toward him, and he backed away, talking rapidly. "I said to myself, 'She's mended ye twice in as many hours, me lad; life amongst the MacKenzies being what it is, it might be as well to wed a woman as can stanch a wound and set broken bones.' And I said to myself, 'Jamie, lad, if her touch feels so bonny on your collarbone, imagine what it might feel like lower down...'"

He dodged around a chair. "Of course, I thought it might ha' just been the effects of spending four months in a monastery, without benefit of female companionship, but then that ride through the dark together"--he paused to sigh theatrically, neatly evading my grab at his sleeve--"with that lovely broad arse wedged between my thighs"--he ducked a blow aimed at his left ear and sidestepped, getting a low table between us--"and that rock-solid head thumping me in the chest"--a small metal ornament bounced off his own head and went clanging to the floor--"I said to myself..."

He was laughing so hard at this point that he had to gasp for breath between phrases. "Jamie...I said...for all she's a Sassenach bitch...with a tongue like an adder's ...with a bum like that...what does it matter if she's a f-face like a sh-sh-eep?"

I tripped him neatly and landed on his stomach with both knees as he hit the floor with a crash that shook the house.

"You mean to tell me that you married me out of love?" I demanded. He raised his eyebrows, struggling to draw in breath.

"Have I not...just been...saying so?”
― Diana Gabaldon, Outlander

“And that was the moment I realized: when the world felt dark and scary, love could whisk you off to go dancing; laughter could take some of the pain away; beauty could punch holes in your fear. I decided then that my life would be full of all three.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“That was what I'd always loved about reading, what had driven me to write in the first place. That feeling that a new world was being spun like a spiderweb around you and you couldn't move until the whole thing had revealed itself to you.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“If you think the story has a sad ending, it's because it's not over yet.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“When you love someone,” he said haltingly, “. . . you want to make this world look different for them. To give all the ugly stuff meaning, and amplify the good. That’s what you do. For your readers. For me. You make beautiful things, because you love the world, and maybe the world doesn’t always look how it does in your books, but . . . I think putting them out there, that changes the world a little bit. And the world can’t afford to lose that.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“Sometimes life is very hard. Sometimes it demands so much of you that you start losing pieces of yourself as you stretch out to give what the world wants to take.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“Falling's the part that takes your breath away. It's the part when you can't believe the person standing in front of you both exists and happened to wander into your path. It's supposed to make you feel lucky to be alive, exactly when and where you are.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“Again and again he told me I wasn't myself. But he was wrong. I was the same me I'd always been. I'd just stopped trying to glow in the dark for him, or anyone else.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“People were complicated. They weren't math problems; they were collections of feelings and decisions and dumb luck.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“If you swapped out all my Jessicas for Johns, do you know what you'd get? Fiction. Just fiction. Ready and willing to be read by anyone, but somehow by being a woman who writes about women, I've eliminated half the Earth's population from my potential readers, and you know what? I don't feel ashamed of that. I feel pissed.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“Bad things don't dig down through your life until the pit's so deep that nothing good will ever be big enough to make you happy again. No matter how much shit, there will always be wildflowers.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“I always like that thought, the way two people really did seem to grow into one. Or at least two overlapping parts, trees with tangled roots.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“Love, after all, was often made not of shiny things but practical ones. Ones that grew old and rusted only to be repaired and polished.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“Dammit, R.E.M. was right: Every single person on the planet had to take turns hurting. Sometimes all you could do was hold on to each other right until the dark spat you back out.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“Hate, I found out on the ride home, was a less embarrassing way to say fear.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“When I think about you, January, and I think about doing laundry with you and trying terrible green juice cleanses and going to antiques malls with you, I only feel happy. The world looks different than I ever thought it could be, and I don’t want to look for what’s broken or what could go wrong. I don’t want to brace myself for the worst and miss out on being with you.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“My Happily Ever After was a strand of strung-together happy-for-nows, extending back not to just a year ago, but to thirty years before.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else's muse.
I am not a muse.
I am the somebody.
End of fucking story.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones & The Six