Maggie Shipstead Quotes & Sayings

Her throat is tight with fear. She is afraid of how this man, this stranger, has already changed the sensation of being alive. She is afraid he will slip away. — Maggie Shipstead

She hates to disappoint him. She fears the slow, corrosive trickle of reality into his adulation. — Maggie Shipstead

Female friendship was one-tenth prevention and nine-tenths cleanup. — Maggie Shipstead

People spent their lives searching for something beyond the simple friction of skin on skin, but there was nothing. The void between two people could never be closed, and in trying to close it, they would only learn everything that was to be despised in the other. — Maggie Shipstead

This was truly advanced WASP: how to comfort a wronged wife and mother without acknowledging any misdeeds done or embarrassment caused by loved ones. — Maggie Shipstead

What do I do?' she had asked Harry. 'What do I do now? Everything is ruined. You've ruined everything.' 'That you think that," he'd said, "is exactly the problem. — Maggie Shipstead

When they are alone, lying quietly, he holds her the way a child holds a stuffed animal: for comfort, for security, out of a primate's urge to cling, to close one's arms around a warm, soft object. — Maggie Shipstead

Told with rare honesty, My Accidental Jihad is the story of Krista Bremer's lifelong quest for insight and understanding, a search that leads her out of the Pacific surf to journalism school in North Carolina and through the complex challenges and unexpected joys of a cross-cultural marriage and family. This book is a powerfully personal account of the courage and hard work necessary to open one's heart and keep it that way. — Maggie Shipstead

He let go, releasing her into a life of her own making. — Maggie Shipstead

She seems distracted, the way Joan feels when Harry is away on a school trip and part of her tries to follow him clairvoyantly through his day, probing the ether for any sign of distress. — Maggie Shipstead

Ordinarily, her love affairs are entered into skittishly, sometimes reluctantly. She doesn't dive into bed but flutters in like a wayward moth. — Maggie Shipstead

The flowers, the candles, the easy swing of the music, his daughter's perfectly made-up face, her artfully arranged hair, the swell of her pregnancy - it all cried out for love, for pride, for fatherly tenderness, even if Daphne would not look at him, even if she had walled herself up with her happiness and left him outside. He did not know how to make her forgive him. He would have to wait. — Maggie Shipstead

A voice that signaled he was being kind but not sincere. — Maggie Shipstead

Marriage is difficult, perhaps the most difficult thing you can ever do, besides being a parent, but I think these two fine young people are up to the challenge. Here are two steady, responsible people who, I believe, understand the dire commitment they are about to make and will choose to keep that commitment. Because it turns out to be a choice, commitment-not some done deal. When you leave the alter tomorrow, there will still be a lifetime of choice and temptation and doubt and uncertainty in front of you. I didn't know that at my wedding. Getting married doesn't change you. Marriage changes you. — Maggie Shipstead

No number of compliments will convince her of anything, and one of Jacob's projects in their marriage is to wean her off perfectionism. — Maggie Shipstead

How strange it was that a dream, once realized, could quickly turn mundane. — Maggie Shipstead

Though she would never say so, Sandy holds the opinion that mothers who keep their figures have sacrificed less than mothers who have widened and softened. — Maggie Shipstead

With impeccable prose, dry wit, and uncommon wisdom, Ted Thompson brings to life one family's painful disappointments and powerful resilience. The Land of Steady Habits combines Austen's shrewd mastery of domestic economics with Updike's compassion for the melancholy commuter to make something elegant, fresh, and brilliant. — Maggie Shipstead

He finds low-level jealousy to be enlivening, pleasantly astringent. — Maggie Shipstead

An airplane crossed the sky, and she imagined its interior-people packed in rows like eggs in a carton, the chemical smell of the toilets, pretzels in foil pouches, cans hiss-popping open, black oval of night sky embedded in the rattling walls. How strange that something so drab, so confined, so stifling with sour exhalations and the fumes of indifferent machinery might be mistaken for a star. — Maggie Shipstead