"Books could be an incredible adventure. I stayed under my blanket and barely moved, and no one would have guessed how my mind raced and my heart soared with stories."

Paula McLain | The Paris Wife

"The first time I saw a narcissus pushing through ice and thriving, I thought it was perfect and wanted that kind of determination for myself."

Paula McLain | The Paris Wife

"I don’t know how long we danced that night, back and forth across the living room in a long slow ellipse. Every time the recording ended, Ernest shuffled away from me briefly to start it again. Back in my arms, he buried his face in my neck, his hands clasped low on my back. Three minutes of magic suspended and restrung. Maybe happiness was an hourglass already running out, the grains tipping, sifting past each other. Maybe it was a state of mind […] a country you could sculpt out of air and then dance into."

Paula McLain | The Paris Wife

"You have to digest life. You have to chew it up and love it all through. You have to live it with your eyes, really. […] You can talk and talk and not get it right. You have to do it."

Paula McLain | The Paris Wife

"I want to write one true sentence. […] If I can write one sentence, simple and true, every day, I’ll be satisfied."

Paula McLain | The Paris Wife

"It’s one of the things war does to you. Everything you see works to replace moments and people from your life before, until you can’t remember why any of it mattered. It doesn’t help if you’re not a soldier. The effect is the same."

Paula McLain | The Paris Wife

"More and more I found myself at a loss for words and didn’t want to hear other people talking either. Their conversations seemed false and empty. I preferred to look at the sea, which said nothing and never made you feel alone."

Paula McLain | The Paris Wife

"No one you love is ever truly lost."

Paula McLain | The Paris Wife

"Ernest once told me that the word paradise was a Persian word that meant “walled garden.” I knew then that he understood how necessary the promises we made to each other were to our happiness. You couldn’t have real freedom unless you knew where the walls were and tended them. We could lean on the walls because they existed; they existed because we leaned on them."

Paula McLain | The Paris Wife

"He was such an enigma, really - fierce and strong and weak and cruel. An incomparable friend and a son of a bitch. In the end, there wasn’t one thing about him that was truer than the rest. It was all true."

Paula McLain | The Paris Wife

Paula McLain | The Paris Wife

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