Did everyone make the most ghastly blunders at regularly intervals through their life and live to regret them ever afterward? Was everyone's life filled with confusing and contradictory mix of guilt and innocence, hatred and love, concern and unconcern, and any number of other pairings of polar opposites? Or were most people one thing or the other - good or bad, cheerful or crotchety, generous or miserly, and so on.
Mary BaloghAnd of course the word love has many shades of meaning, as do many, many of the words in our living, breathing language
Mary BaloghI am free, you see," she said, "to love or to withhold love. Love and dependence need no longer be the same thing to me. I am free to love. that is why I love you and it is the way I love you. If you have come here, Kit, because you think you owe me something, because you believe I might crumble without your protection, then go away again with my blessing and find happiness with someone else." "I love you," he said again.
Mary BaloghIf you have always suspected your sister of an inclination to madness, it will be my pleasure to confirm your worst fears.
Mary BaloghA sunrise or sunset can be ablaze with brilliance and arouse all the passion, all the yearning, in the soul of the beholder.
Mary BaloghAnd he knew at that moment that love world never die, that it would never fade away altogether. The time might come when he would meet and marry someone else. He might even be reasonably happy. But there would always be a deep precious place in his heart that belonged to his first real love.
Mary Balogh