01c. 1973 ADWe cannot decide to love. We cannot compel anyone to love us. There's no secret recipe, only love itself. And we are at its mercy--there's nothing we can do.Nina George / quote ↗
02c. 1973 ADIt takes only one word to hurt a woman, a matter of seconds, one stupid, impatient blow of the crop. But winning back her trust takes years. And sometimes there isn't the time.Nina George / quote ↗
03c. 1973 AD...Time had seemed infinite when she still had many years and decades ahead of her. A book waiting to be written: as a girl, that was how she had seen her future life. Now she was sixty, and the pages were blank. Infinity had passed like one long continuous day.Nina George / quote ↗
04c. 1973 ADWhenever Monsieur Perdu looked at a book, he did not see it purely in terms of a story, retail price and an essential balm for the soul; he saw freedom on wings of paper.Nina George / quote ↗
05c. 1973 ADShe'll be your dance partner, Jordan""Her? She's much too good. I'm scared!""Remember the feeling. Someday you'll want to write about it, and then it'll be good to know how the fear feels and to go ahead and dance all the same.Nina George / quote ↗
06c. 1973 ADAny man who loves a woman as she deserves to be loved is a magician.Nina George / quote ↗
07c. 1973 ADOh, merciless freedom, you continue to overwhelm me! You demand that I challenge myself and feel ashamed, and yet continue to feel so outrageously proud to live a life full of my desires.Nina George / quote ↗
08c. 1973 ADYes, the woman." Cunco took a deep breath. "Women like her don't come along that often, you know. Maybe only every two hundred years. She everything a man could dream of. Beautiful, clever, wise, considerate, passionate--absolutely everything.Nina George / quote ↗
09c. 1973 AD[Women] are superior beings to us men. When they love us, then they are being gracious, for only rarely do we give them reason to love us. I learned that from your mother, and she's right. Sad to say, she's right.Nina George / quote ↗
10c. 1973 ADThere are women who only look at another woman's shoes and never at her face.And others who always look women in the face and only occasionally at their shoes.Nina George / quote ↗
11c. 1973 ADHis reading aloud was constantly improving, and histories were more like radio plays. Perdu suspected that these small children, listening with eyes wide and in rapt concentration, would one day grow up to need reading, with an accompanying sense of wonder and the feeling of having a film running inside your head, as much as they needed air to breathe.Nina George / quote ↗
13c. 1973 ADI don't know how many years it's been since I last slept with my husband. I was faithful, stupid and so awfully lonely that I'll gobble you up if you're nice to me. Or kill you because I can't bear it.Nina George / quote ↗
14c. 1973 ADWhat a hideous life he had chosen, how painful was the loneliness he endured because he didn't have the courage to trust someone again. To trust someone entirely because in love there is no other way.Nina George / quote ↗
15c. 1973 ADWe are loved if we love, another truth we always seem to forget. ...Loving requires so much courage and so little expectation.Nina George / quote ↗
16c. 1973 ADOften it’s not we who shape words, but the words we use that shape us.Nina George / quote ↗
17c. 1973 ADI'm looking for what I was capable of before... Or to be more precise, I'm trying to see whether I'm still capable of it.Nina George / quote ↗
18c. 1973 ADAnd slowly, infinitely slowly, he began to trust. Not the sea, from from it; no one should make that mistake!Nina George / quote ↗
19c. 1973 ADThe radiance of this beautiful scene shed a cruel light on every past horror, every insult tolerated, every unspoken retort, every gesture of rejection. Marianne was grieving, and her boundless grief made her regret every moment of cowardice in her life.Nina George / quote ↗
20c. 1973 ADAnd yes, being lovesick is like being in mourning. Because you die, because your future dies and you with it...There is a hurting time. It lasts for so long. But it gets better. I know that now.Nina George / quote ↗
21c. 1973 ADIt's amazing how close you are to your essential self as a kid, he thought, and how far from it you drift the more you strive to be loved.Nina George / quote ↗
22c. 1973 AD...having a child is like casting off your own childhood forever. It's as if it's only then that you really grasp what it means to be a man. You're scared too that all your weaknesses will be laid bare, because fatherhood demands more than you can give.... I always felt I had to earn your love, because I loved you so, so much.Nina George / quote ↗
24c. 1973 ADHey, Salvo," asked Max when they had almost fallen asleep. "May I write your story?""Don't you dare, amico" was Salvatore's reply. "Kindly come up with your own storia, young Massimo. If you take mine, I'll have none left of my ownNina George / quote ↗
