Mclain Quotes & Sayings

Dust billowed around us, creeping under our loose-tied handkerchiefs and into our noses and mouths. It was fine and silty, red as ochre or the brush-tailed fox, — Paula McLain

Nothing hurts if you don't let it. — Paula McLain

Maybe no one can know how it is for anyone else. — Paula McLain

The sky had taken Denys, but I knew there was life up there, too
a combination of forces suited to me, to how I was made, in powerful ways. That great soaring freedom and unimaginable grace came fully tethered to risk and to fear. Flying demanded more courage and faith than I actually posessed, and it wanted my best, my whole self. I would have to work very hard to be any good at it at all, and be more than a little mad to be great, to give my life over to it. But that's just what I meant to do. — Paula McLain

Your age?" "My age? He has to be thirty." "Farm life is going to harden you, you know. You think you'll be young and beautiful for ever and that you'll have plenty of chances, but it doesn't work like that." "She's only sixteen, Em," my father said. "She has plenty of time." "That's what you think. We're not helping, keeping her out here with no company. School didn't do a thing - not that she was there long. She's wild. She doesn't know how to make conversation." "Why are we talking about manners and society, when there are real problems to think about? — Paula McLain

Mary Lovell's Straight On Till Morning: The Life of Beryl Markham was the first biography to bring Beryl to light, in 1987, and her pioneering efforts and careful research have been crucial to my own and other writers' abilities to imagine Beryl's life. Mary Lovell also compiled Beryl Markham's stories in The Splendid Outcast, a collection that wouldn't have been available otherwise, and for that — Paula McLain

It was as if we'd pressed ourselves together until his bones passed through mine and we were the same person, ever so briefly. — Paula McLain

I want to go and work for Delamere," I said quickly, before I could change my mind or take it back. "I can learn to train there. My father suggested it before he left and I think it's a sound move." "What? We have our own animals. Why go somewhere else?" "It isn't just the work, Jock. Nothing's right between us. You know it as well as I do." "We're just beginning. Give it time." "Time won't do a thing. You should have a proper wife, one who wants to care for you and have a dozen children and all of it. That's not me." He — Paula McLain

Have you ever seen stars like this? You can't have. They don't make them like this anywhere in the world." Above our heads, the sky was a brimming treasure box. Some of the stars seemed to want to pull free and leap down onto my shoulders - and though these were the only ones I had ever known, I believed Denys when he said they were the finest. I thought I might believe anything he said, in fact, even though we had just met. He had that in him. — Paula McLain

I'd never met anyone so vibrant or alive. He moved like light. — Paula McLain

Bit burrs. Tongue-tying. Saddling for exercise and saddling for races. There was shoeing and bandaging, conditioning and equipment. I had to learn to read track surfaces and stakes sheets, and calculate weight allowances. I had to know the diseases and ailments forward and back - bowed tendons and splints, foundering, bucked shins, bone chips, slab fractures, and quarter cracks. Thoroughbreds were glorious and also fragile in very specific ways. They often had small hearts, and the exertion of racing also made them susceptible to haemorrhaging in the lungs. Undetected colic could kill them - and — Paula McLain

They failed at some important task and were banished to the heavens. The women themselves were wizened and toothless, or supple as polished ebony, with long-muscled limbs under pale shukas. I loved them and their tales, but I wanted more to join Kibii and the other totos who were becoming warriors, young morani. The role of girls in the village was entirely domestic. I had a different position - a rare one, free from the — Paula McLain

It was our favorite part of the day, this in-between time, and it always seemed to last longer than it should
a magic and lavender space unpinned from the hours around it, between worlds. — Paula McLain

You have to digest life. You have to chew it up and love it all through. — Paula McLain

You are everything good and straight and fine and true - and I see that so clearly now, in the way you've carried yourself and listened to your own heart. You've changed me more than you know, and will always be a part of everything I am. That's one thing I've learned from this. No one you love is ever truly lost. — Paula McLain

So much happened (in 1968) it was hard to keep up with everything. We had Denny McLain's thirty-one victories, Gates Brown's great pinch-hitting in the clutch, Tom Matchick's home run to beat Baltimore in the ninth inning, then Daryl Patterson striking out the side to beat them in the ninth. Excitement every day in the ballpark. — Ernie Harwell

They love me like a pack of wolves.


Ernest — Paula McLain

I can't see how I'll make it a year this way," he said.
"It seems impossible, I know. But when we're old and doddering, this year will seem like a blink. — Paula McLain

Isn't love a beautiful goddamn liar? — Paula McLain

I've sometimes thought that being loved a little less than others can actually make a person, rather than ruin them. — Paula McLain

Because it's not always easy to know how to live. — Paula McLain

swallowed. My ears felt as if — Paula McLain

All that running and exercise can do for you is make you healthy. — Denny McLain

Are you always this wise, Ruth?"
"Only when it comes to other people's lives. — Paula McLain

I loved him for a full year and then, in one night, all my wishing came apart. — Paula McLain

The things of the world knew so much more than we did and lived them more truly. The thorn trees had no grief or fear. The constellations didn't fight or hold themselves back, nor did the translucent hook of the moon. Everything was momentary and endless. — Paula McLain

Baobab. Away in the distance I could see the cloud-softened — Paula McLain

He pulled me into the room and way lay on the featherbed and made love. And I was reminded of what was best about us.
How very easy and natural we could be as bodies, with no sharp angles or missteps and no need for talking.
How in bed, as nowhere else, he was my favorite animal and I was his. — Paula McLain

Proper learning isn't just useful in society, Beryl. It can be wonderfully yours, a thing to have and keep just for you. — Paula McLain

I would gladly have climbed out of my skin and into his that night, because I believed that was what love meant. — Paula McLain

I was thinking about how I had struggled and strained for years, as Karen had, and toward things that were disastrous for me. And maybe that was unavoidable. The pilgrims and the lost often did look the same, as Denys had once told me. And it was possible everyone ended up in the same place no matter which path we took or how often we fell to our knees, undoubtedly wiser for all of it. — Paula McLain

On the third evening, Jock finally sat down across from me, his eyes flat as chips of flint. "This isn't something you can bury in the sand and forget about, Beryl. Go and work for Delamere if that's what you're going to do, but you'll go as my wife." "We'll be pretending then? For how long?" He shrugged. "Don't forget you need me, too. Your father's horses are half mine now, and you can't care for them on a pauper's salary. — Paula McLain

You on the train and me here and everything emptier now you're gone. Tell me, are you real? — Paula McLain

Because you can't chart a course around anything you're afraid of. You can't run from any part of yourself, and it's better that you can't. Sometimes I've thought it's only our challenges that sharpen us, and change us, too - a — Paula McLain

All her stories seemed to involve rowboats and ukuleles, full moons and campfires and grog. I was desperately jealous. — Paula McLain

I'm gonna let him hit one. — Denny McLain

My life was my life; I would have to stare it down, somehow, and make it work for me. — Paula McLain

When I rode away from Jock's farm a week later, I took nothing that I couldn't tie onto the back of my saddle - pyjamas, a toothbrush and comb, a second pair of slacks, a man's shirt in heavy cotton. For Pegasus I carried a thick rug and brush, several pounds of crushed oats, and a small, tarnished blacksmith's knife. It felt wonderful to be riding out in the bush and travelling so lightly, but I was also leaving much unsettled behind me. It was a devil's bargain I had struck with Jock. — Paula McLain

Lower your voice," he warned, but I'd had enough. As he reached for my arm again, I wrenched myself free and nearly flattened Boy Long in the process. I hadn't even seen him. Glancing between Jock and me quickly, gauging the situation, Boy said, "Is everything all right — Paula McLain

The Philadelphia Story, but — Paula McLain

I'd had my share of rain. My mother's illness ... had weighed on me, but the years before had been heavy, too. I was only twenty eight. — Paula McLain

There are many days when I want to throw my computer out the window, when I tell myself I'd be better off selling shoes at the mall. But I always keep at it, because I have to. Writing is completely part of who I am. Even if I never published another book, I would keep at it - because it feeds my life and makes it richer. — Paula McLain

How dreadful it would be if everything toppled you and you folded in. — Paula McLain

We're all of us afraid of many things, but if you make yourself smaller or let your fear confine you, then you really aren't your own person at all - are you? The real question is whether or not you will risk what it takes to be happy." She was referring to Jock, but her words made me think of other things, too. "Are you happy, Karen?" "Not yet. But I mean to be. — Paula McLain

In exchange for Pegasus's stall and my own bunk, D gave me two horses to train. They were both past their prime, dull eyed and recalcitrant, but I was trying to prove myself. I would have to treat them like royalty. I laboured over their exercise and feeding schedules, filling notebooks, trying to meet them on their own territory, and to find or understand something untapped in them, something no one had yet seen. Dynasty, — Paula McLain

Sometimes I've thought it's only our challenges that sharpen us, and change us, too - a mile-long runway and nineteen hundred pounds — Paula McLain

Kate was about to protest when something caused her to look in her mother's direction. She was standing statue-like in front of the television with that brave, painted-on smile. Then Kate realized what had caught her attention: her mother's tear-filled eyes were reflecting the on-off motion of the blinkers like a watery mirror. Kate stared transfixed at the flashing points of light that betrayed her mother's pain. The urge to tell her father how much she wanted him to be proud of her and how much he had hurt her, faded in the dark depths of her mother's eyes. — Sabrynne McLain

We called Paris the great good place then, and it was. We invented it after all. We made it with our longing and cigarettes and Rhum St. James; we made it with smoke and smart and savage conversation and we dared anyone to say it wasn't ours. Together we made everything and then we busted it apart again. — Paula McLain

I get why no one bothers with the usual rules," ... "I was in the war, too, you know. Nothing looks or feels the same anymore, so what's the point?" ... "Still, I miss good old-fashioned honorable people just trying to make something of life. Simply, without hurting anyone else. — Paula McLain

Twende tu, she called out in Swahili as she buckled her helmet. I am going. — Paula McLain

The pilgrims and the lost often did look the same, — Paula McLain

In some ways, it was as if nothing had changed. Our bodies knew each other so well we didn't have to think about how to move. But when it was over and we lay still, I felt a terrible sadness come down because I loved him as much as I ever did. — Paula McLain

And after a time, I stopped struggling even internally against the prescribed quietness. — Paula McLain

This valley was more than my home. It beat in me like the drum of my own heart. Only — Paula McLain

I knew that I could hate him all I wanted for the way he was hurting me, but I couldn't ever stop loving him, absolutely, for what he was. — Paula McLain

It was terrible to feel so empty, as if I were nothing. Why couldn't I be happy? And just what was happines anyway? — Paula McLain

It struck me how comfortable I felt with him, as if we were old friends or had already done this many times over, him handing me pages with his heart on his sleeve - he couldn't pretend this work didn't mean everything to him - me reading his words, quietly amazed by what he could do. — Paula McLain

If you're ready to make the mad dash I'm game. — Paula McLain

Why is it every other person you meet says they're an artist? A real artist doesn't need to gas on about it, he doesn't have time. He does his work and sweats it out in silence, and no one can help him at all. — Paula McLain

What's wrong with all of us, Bill? Can you tell me that?'
'Hell if I know', he said. 'We drink too much for starters. And we want too much, don't we? — Paula McLain

If I can write one sentence, simple and true every day, I'll be satisfied. — Paula McLain

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

They had as good a shot at making it as anyone did, but what if marriage didn't solve anything and didn't save anyone even a little bit? What then? — Paula McLain

You make your life with someone and you love that person and you think it's enough. But it's never enough, is it?
I couldn't say. I don't know anything about love anymore. — Paula McLain

Then the rudder and elevator finally come to life, swinging her nose up, and she's left the earth - arrow straight. A butterfly after all. — Paula McLain

There was no back home any more, not in the essential way, and that was part of Paris too. Why we couldn't stop drinking or talking or kissing the wrong people no matter what it ruined. Some of us had looked into the faces of the dead and tried not to remember anything in particular. Ernest was one of these. He often said he'd died in the war, just for a moment; that his soul had left his body like a silk handkerchief, slipping out and levitating over his chest. It had returned without being called back, and I often wondered if writing for him was a way of knowing his soul was there after all, back in its place. Of saying to himself, if not to anyone else, that he had seen what he'd seen and felt those terrible things and lived anyway. That he had died but wasn't dead any more. — Paula McLain

It was the end of Ernest's struggle with apprenticeship, and an end to other things as well. He would never again be unknown. We would never again be this unhappy. — Paula McLain

I miss good old-fashioned honorable people just trying to make something of life. Simply, without hurting anyone else. I know that makes me a sap. — Paula McLain

At Equator Ranch a decade before, his debut lambing had turned out only six surviving animals of four thousand ewes. Undaunted, he had burned through more of his inheritance (eighty thousand pounds, some claimed), replaced his stock, learned his hard lessons, and was now the most successful large-scale rancher in all of Kenya. Not — Paula McLain

Those early days in Paris were nearly forty years behind him and yet, in the final pages he writes of Hadley, I wished I had died before I ever loved anyone but her. — Paula McLain

He had writing the way other people had religion — Paula McLain

Happiness is so awfully complicated, but freedom isn't. You're either tied down or you're not. — Paula McLain

he grinned a grin that began in his eyes and went everywhere at once. It was devastating. — Paula McLain

A new thing is good, though it be a sore place. — Paula McLain

Ben isn't hard to manage, but Blix's wife, Karen, likes the title too much to part with it. He's made her a baroness." She sighed. "The whole thing has got rather baroque. Karen and I are friends, or were, in any case. Blix asked her for a divorce and told her he was in love with me, probably thinking it would soften the blow." She shook her head. "Now she won't speak to me. — Paula McLain

small gully where the red mud had dried and cracked in a system of parched veins. — Paula McLain

I didn't feel old enough to be anyone's wife, or that I knew enough or had lived enough, or understood the essential things. I didn't know how to say any of this to Jock, either. That I was afraid of the promises we'd made. That late at night as I lay beside him in bed I felt lonely and numb, as if some part of me had died. — Paula McLain

More and more I find 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

Whatever they were, they were living their lives, out there doing it, making their mistakes. Somehow I'd gotten stuck along the way [ ... ] and I didn't know how to free myself exactly. — Paula McLain

This is why there is poetry. For days like these. — Paula McLain

Did you ever think it could be like this? The way we're happening to each other? — Paula McLain

Denys understood how nothing ever holds still for us, or should. The trick is learning to take things as they come and fully, too, with no resistance or fear, not trying to grip them too tightly or make them bend. — Paula McLain

It gave me a sharp kind of sadness to think that no matter how much I loved him and tried to put him back together again, he might stay broken forever. — Paula McLain

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

I might just crawl under my bed and not come out until I'm old and doddering and can't remember feeling anything for anyone at all. — Paula McLain

My father died when I was young. We all thought it was rather fortunate at first. It simplified all sorts of things. But over time ... well. Let's just say I've developed a theory that only the vanished truly leave their mark. And I still don't feel I've sorted it out. Maybe we never do survive our families. — Paula McLain

reached behind me to adjust the stockings again. "Your mother doesn't like me." "She just doesn't want to lose me. That's how mothers are. — Paula McLain

Most things in the world are not unexpected if one thinks carefully about them. Even something one would call unusual- if one things about it, it's really just a thing that was supposed to happen. Encountering unusual events often means you didn't think things through. — Paula McLain

He lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply, the tip flaring an angry red. Isn't love a beautiful goddamn liar? — Paula McLain

But in the end, fighting for a love that was already gone felt like trying to live in the ruins of a lost city. — Paula McLain

I never thought I'd get married," I told Boy as he poured for us. Scotch spilled into the squat glasses with reassuring lapping noises. "I should have left well enough alone." "You don't need to explain. — Paula McLain

You earned him fair and square. He's not mine to take back." He rose to get himself a drink. The peaty odour of scotch flickered up and stung my nose. "I'd like one of those." He looked at me, surprised. "You'll have to go for water." I shook my head. "All right," he said. "I guess you've earned that, too." He handed me the rounded heavy glass, and we sat in silence as the sun retreated. I'd had wine and champagne, but this was different. It made me feel older. — Paula McLain

We stood there, locked and lovely as statues in a garden. — Paula McLain

He takes her hand and they leave. There's a taxi outside and they go to her room without saying anything. Behind the door, she unties the dress, and then reaches for his belt. He pushes her hands away. He'll do it all himself, though his right hand is bleeding. He sits on a small wooden chair and pulls her down on top of him and feels how rough and silky she is straddling him. He is the one moving her, as if she's a doll, and he knows it has to be this way because it makes him feel that he won't die, at least for tonight. — Paula McLain

I don't have to tell you how pointless it is to dwell on the past, sweet pea. — Molly McLain

Men hear what they like and invent the rest. — Paula McLain

The accordion and the whores and the retching,' he said. 'That's our music. — Paula McLain

Her absence was still so loud and so heavy, I ached with it, feeling hollow and lost. I didn't know how to forget my mother any more than my father knew how he might comfort me. — Paula McLain

And that's when he finally tells me his name is Ernest. I'm thinking of giving it away, though. Ernest is so dull, and Hemingway? Who wants a Hemingway? — Paula McLain

Sometimes when you're hurting, it helps to throw yourself at something that will take your weight. — Paula McLain