Mary Ann Shaffer Quotes

This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.

Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.

I don’t know whether to feel flattered or hunted.

I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.

Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.

I have gone to [this bookshop] for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadn’t known I wanted.

After all, what's good enough for Austen ought to be good enough for anyone.

Isola doesn't approve of small talk and believes in breaking the ice by stomping on it.

Those times, I tried to think of something happy, something I'd liked - but not something I loved, for that made it worse.

His writings have made me his friend.

Moses: God or crowd control?!?

Humour is the best way to make the unbearable bearable.

Will Thisbee gave me The Beginner's Cook-Book for Girl Guides. It was just the thing; the writer assumes you know nothing about cookery and writes useful hints - "When adding eggs, break the shells first.

Now that I think about it, maybe he is a werewolf. I can picture him lunging over the moors in hot pursuit of his prey, and I'm certain that he wouldn't think twice about eating an innocent bystander. I'll watch him closely at the next full moon. He's asked me to go dancing tomorrow--perhaps I should wear a high collar. Oh, that's vampires, isn't it? I think I am a little giddy. (After meeting Mr. Markham V. Reynolds, Jr.)

Do you suppose the St. Swithin's furnace-man was my one true love? Since I never spoke to him, it seems unlikely, but at least it was a passion unscathed by disappointment.

Miss X has always been a ditherer -- she was a ten month baby and has not improved in any material way since then.

Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb.

Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.

I much prefer whining to counting my blessings.

I am to cover the philosophical side of the debate and so far my only thought is that reading keeps you from going gaga.

I am in a constant state of surprise these days. Actually, now that I calculate, I've been betrothed only one full day, but it seems like my whole life has come into being in the last twenty-four hours. Think of it! We could have gone on longing for one another and pretending not to notice forever. This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it

That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive - all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.

Treat a dog right and he'll treat you right - he'll keep you company, be your friend, never ask you no questions. Cats is different, but I never held that against them.

What on earth did you say to Isola? She stopped in on her way to pick up Pride and Prejudice and to berate me for never telling her about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Why hadn't she known there were better love stories around? Stories not riddled with ill-adjusted men, anguish, death and graveyards!

Then i imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again.

Think of it! We could have gone on longing for one another and pretending not to notice forever. This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.

Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on.

I hope, too, that my book will illuminate my belief that love of art - be it poetry, storytelling, painting, sculpture, or music - enables people to transcend any barrier man has yet devised.

Your questions regarding that gentleman are very delicate, very subtle, very much like being smacked in the head with a mallet...it's a tuba among the flutes.

He had no imagination either-fatal for one engaged in child-rearing

I sometimes think I prefer suitors in books rather than right in front of me. How awful, backward, cowardly, and mentally warped that will be if it turns out to be true.

I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers-- booksellers really are a special breed. No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no one in his right mind would want to own one-- the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it-- along with first dibs on the new books.

I, too, have felt that the war goes on and on. When my son, Ian, died at El Alamein-- side by side with... 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 nexe year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it.

My worries travel around in my head on their well worn path

Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person's name suddenly pops up everywhere you go? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Mr. Simpless, my parson friend, calls it Grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and "fruitfulness" is drawn in.

It was amazing to me then, and still is, that so many people who wander into bookshops don't really know what they're after--they only want to look around and hope to see a book that will strike their fancy. And then, being bright enough not to trust the publisher's blurb, they will ask the book clerk the three questions: (1) What is it about? (2) Have you read it? (3) Was it any good?

‎What a blight that woman is. Do you happen to know why? I lean toward a malignant fairy at her christening.

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)!

But you want to know about the influence of books on my life, and as I've said, there was only one. Seneca. . .Maybe that sounds dull, but the letters aren't - they're witty. I think you learn more if you're laughing at the same time.

I don't want to be married just to be married.

Because there is nothing I would rather do than rummage through bookshops, I went at once to Hastings & Sons Bookshop upon receiving your letter. I have gone to them for years, always finding the one book I wanted - and then three more I hadn't known I wanted.

Isn't that something-to know your own soul by hearsay, instead of its own tidings? Why should I let a preacher tell me if I had one or not? If I could believe I hada soul, all by myself, then I could listen to its tidings all by myself.

Reading keeps you from going ga-ga.

People don't know how chickens can turn on you, but they can -- just like mad dogs.

one year as his wife, and id have become one of those abject, quaking women who look at their husbands when someone asks them a question. I've always despised that type, but I see how it happens now

We read books, talked books, argued over books and became dearer and dearer to one another.

Friends, show me a man who hates himself, and I'll show you a man who hates his neighbours more! He'd have to – you wouldn't grant anyone else something you can't have for yourself – no love, no kindness, no respect!

All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged -- after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot.