Best 37 quotes of Susanna Kearsley on MyQuotes

But life, if nothing else, had taught her promises weren't always to be counted on, and what appeared at first a shining chance might end in bitter disappointment.

Ever try to hold a butterfly? It can't be done. You damage them," he said. 'As gentle as you try to be, you take the powder from their wings and they won't ever fly the same. It's kinder to let them go.

I believe there are no random meetings in our lives – that everyone we touch, who touches us, has been put in our path for a reason. The briefest encounter can open a door, or heal a wound, or close a circle that was started long before your birth.

I do promise that you will survive this. Faith, my own heart is so scattered round the country now, I marvel that it has the strength each day to keep me standing. But it does,' she said, and drawing in a steady breath she pulled back just enough to raise a hand to wipe Sophia's tears. 'It does. And so will yours.' 'How can you be so sure?' 'Because it is a heart, and knows no better.

If it is true that men have souls that do survive them, he went on, ignoring me, and if those souls are born again to life, you need not worry that my ghost will haunt you. I'll haunt you in the flesh, instead.

It's too easy, you see, to get trapped in the past. The past is very seductive. People always talk about the mists of time, you know, but really it's the present that's in a mist, uncertain. The past is quite clear, and warm, and comforting. That's why people often get stuck there.

Knowing that the battle will not end the way he wishes does not make it any less worthwhile the fight.

Life is always uncertain,'he said with a shrug. 'We cannot let the fear of what might happen stop us living as we choose.

Men who watch, and say little, very often are much wiser than the men they serve.

..the fields might fall to fallow and the birds might stop their song awhile; the growing things might die and lie in silence under snow, while through it all the cold sea wore its face of storms and death and sunken hopes...and yet unseen beneath the waves a warmer current ran that, in its time, would bring the spring.

The past can teach us, nurture us, but it cannot sustain us. The essence of life is change, and we must move ever forward or the soul will wither and die.

There's a line in The Barretts of Wimpole Street - you know, the play - where Elizabeth Barrett is trying to work out the meaning of one of Robert Browning's poems, and she shows it to him, and he reads it and he tells her when he wrote that poem, only God and Robert Browning knew what it meant, and now only God knows. And that's how I feel about studying English. Who knows what the writer was thinking, and why should it matter? I'd rather just read for enjoyment.

These are your beautiful days, Julia Beckett," he promised softly.

Tis action moves the world....[in] the game of chess, mind that: ye cannot leave your men to stand unmoving on the board and hope to win. A soldier must first step upon the battlefield if does mean to cross it.

When I meet a wind I cannot fight , I can do naught but set my sails to let it take me where it will.

And does he like blondes, as well?' Rob laughed. I had forgotten just how great a laugh he had. 'No, he prefers, dark haired women. You've nothing to fear from the Sentinel, Nicola.

And this morning while she'd harvested her beans for seed she'd glanced up from the garden and to her complete astonishment Mr. de Sabran had been smiling. Not at her- he had been saying something to French Peter, his attention focused mainly on the cider press. But still, he had been smiling. And that simple act had made his face a thing she barely recognized. His teeth were even. Very white and very straight although the smile itself was lopsided, so wide it carved deep lines in both his cheeks and made his eyes crease at their edges. He looked younger. He looked- Then, as if he'd known that she was staring, he had turned his head and for the briefest, stomach-dropping instant, he had turned that smile on her. Her hand had itched to hold a pencil that would let her somehow capture it, but with one polite, quick nod he had looked away, returning to his conversation and his work. Since that moment, she had found herself innumerable times now glancing up from her own work to see if she might catch him smiling in that way again. She hadn't, but she noticed he looked more relaxed today than she had seen him; more at ease with both their company and his surroundings, as though he were there by choice and not by force of circumstance.

And while the walls in all the other rooms were filled with artwork, here there was a single painting hung with care- a path through a forest with shadows and soft morning sunlight on fallen trees, everything quiet and green. "It's by Shishkin," Wendy told me, when she noticed I was looking at it. "Ivan Shishkin.

Benjamin had come here often as a boy to chase his dreams of grand adventure, studying the passing ships so that he could, like Joseph, know the types of vessels by their varied shapes and rigging, be they brigs or sloops or bilanders or snows. He'd watched them for so long that he could name most of the New York ships on sight, amazing Lydia, who only recognized her brother William's four: the Bellewther, the Honest John, the Katharine, and the Fox. Of these, her favorite was the Bellewether, because although the smallest of them all it was the prettiest and swiftest. "She will run before all the others," had been William's explanation of the sloop's name. "Like the sheep we bell to lead the flock." "You've spelled it wrong," their mother had said mildly as she'd read the brave name painted on the hull. "It is spelled 'bellwether,' without the second e." "But 'belle,' is French for 'beautiful,' and she is surely that," had been his answer.

Do you ever feel your mother?" Lydia's pencil stilled. "Yes," she said, quietly. "Sometimes I do." Later that evening, when supper was finished, she took up her mending and curled herself into her mother's old chair with its leather seat slung in the low X-shaped frame like a welcoming lap. She could almost imagine her mother's arms holding her, here in the room with the warmth of the fire and the light of the candles, the wind rising hard at the glass of the window. The men were still sitting around the long table in cross conversations, her brother and Mr. Ramírez discussing the length of the Bellewether's deck, while her father and Mr. de Brassart debated the merits of some play by Shakespeare, and Mr. de Sabran sat back and observed. All the voices ran into and over each other and blended like billowy waves folding into the sea, and she struggled to stay on the surface while all of those waves with the troubles they carried went by. "Feel them passing?" her mother asked, rocking her gently. Except they weren't passing. They bore her relentlessly down like great weights on her shoulders until she was sinking. And then in place of her mother's arms she felt the strong ones of Mr. de Sabran, protecting her as they had done in New York, and it suddenly wasn't so terrible, drowning. She held him and drifted down into the dark.

Forgive me, I meant no offense." He moved toward the doorway. Jean-Philippe frowned. "Captain?" "Yes?" Throughout their meeting, Jean-Philippe had taken care to keep his own gaze from too often drifting to the parlor window and the view it offered of the trees beside the barn, where for some time the younger brother had been climbing through the branches cutting clumps of berries to be tossed down to his sister. It was clearly an old game with them, and Jean-Philippe could not help but be jealous of the laughter she gave easily to someone else. He'd purposely not watched them long, in case his face betrayed his interest in her to the captain. It was never wise to let your captor see a weakness he could use against you. Even now he did not glance toward the parlor window, though he wanted to. "What you just said...'Forgive me, I meant no offense'..." "Yes?" "How," asked Jean-Philippe, "does one say that in English?

...for through some subtle alchemy his presence had allowed her to be who she truly was, and now, without him there, she could not manage it at all.

From that position he had a clear view of Lydia within her garden, working with an admirably single-minded steadiness. She'd changed her hair. She normally pulled all of it straight back and off her face and bound it simply, letting part of its coiled length hang down beneath the plain white muslin of her cap. But on this morning she had not been so severe with it. He liked the fuller, softer waves of brown about her forehead and her temples. "So," he told Pierre, "it would be useful for me, while I'm here, to learn more English, so that in the future I can speak to those I capture." "You are maybe overconfident, Marine, to think you will return to war." "I'll be exchanged eventually." With a shrug he said, "So then in English, tell me, would you tell someone that it's nice, the way they wear their hair today?" Pierre's glance held amusement. "This is how you deal with men you capture, eh? You compliment their hair? It's very threatening and very tough, I'm sure it leaves them terrified." He hadn't had much cause for smiling since coming here, but Jean-Philippe felt his features relaxing now into a genuine smile at the other man's dry remark, and without meaning to, he looked again toward Lydia. And found her looking straight back at him. Once he'd been hit an inch under his heart with a bullet- there had been no pain but he'd lost all the wind from his lungs and been knocked right off balance, and what he felt now felt like that. This time, though, despite its swift and sudden strike, the feeling was decidedly more pleasurable. As he sent a nod across the clearing to acknowledge her, his smile of its own volition broadened like a schoolboy's. He was letting down his guard, he knew, allowing the Acadian to witness where his interest- and his weakness- lay, but for some reason, standing in the sunshine with her watching him, he'd ceased to care.

Here on the upland where the land had been well cleared, she had a view not only of the bay but of the wider Sound, and of the ships that came and went continually between New York's harbor and the sea. Benjamin had come here often as a boy to chase his dreams of grand adventure, studying the passing ships so that he could, like Joseph, know the types of vessels by their varied shapes and rigging, be they brigs or sloops or bilanders or snows. He'd watched them for so long that he could name most of the New York ships on sight, amazing Lydia, who only recognized her brother William's four: the Bellewether, the Honest John, the Katharine, and the Fox. Of these, her favorite was the Bellewether, because although the smallest of them all it was the prettiest and swiftest. "She will run before all the others," had been William's explanation of the sloop's name. "Like the sheep we bell to lead the flock." "You've spelled it wrong," their mother had said mildly as she'd read the brave name painted on the hull. "It is spelled 'bellwether,' without the second e." "But 'belle' is French for 'beautiful,' and she is surely that," had been his answer.

He's really so adorable. The dog, I mean. Did you know he's a rescue beagle?" I'd remembered Frank and Sam had used the term the day I'd first encountered Bandit, but I'd just assumed it meant that he'd come from the pound. Rachel had set me straight. "They use them to experiment on. You know, in laboratories. Sam says they use beagles because they're so gentle and sweet-tempered they won't even bite you when you're hurting them. And after a few years when they 'retire' the dogs, some labs give them to rescue groups who try to find them homes. Sam says that Bandit didn't even know what grass was when he got him. It's his second rescue beagle. He had one before, a girl dog, but she ended up with cancer and he had to put her down. So he got Bandit." "Beagles," Sam said now, as he stood squarely on the scaffolding, "don't like to be alone. So she'll be doing me a favor." "What about the doggie day-care place?" "Nah. There's a Labradoodle there that's always picking on him. He'll be better hanging out with Rachel." I was not completely fooled. I knew he'd talked to Rachel for a while, because she'd told me that he had. "He's really nice," she'd said. "He listens." So I knew he knew that Rachel wasn't finding this an easy time, and I suspected Sam just figured she and Bandit were a lot alike in needing some companionship from somebody who understood and didn't push their boundaries. Whatever his true motivations, it was an inspired move.

I had met death before, in different forms--I knew quite well the pattern of my grieving. First came shock, and then tears, and then a bitter anger, followed by a softer grief that time would wear away.

It's the only thing I begrudge the rich," I said, as I followed him back down the damp-smelling staircase to the ground floor. "What's that?" "Their ability to buy books that the rest of us can never hope to own.

Oliver...' 'What?' 'I do like you.' 'But?' 'I just don't want you to think that I'm... that is, I'm really not looking for...' 'Hey.' I could hear the faint smile in his voice. 'It's a book, not an etching.

Outside, the night was soft and fresh. There was a half-moon shining brightly in a field of stars, a glowing ring of light surrounding it, and it had made a trail across the bay that showed in places through the darker screen of trees. They walked in silence, and she breathed the mingled scents of wildflowers sleeping in the shadows, and the salt air of the sea. He had not let go of her hand. She did not want him to. They did not leave the clearing but at length they reached its edge, where rustling branches stretched above them and the light and noise and music of the barn seemed far away. One heart-shaped leaf fell from a nearby tree and landed on his shoulder and unthinkingly she lifted her free hand to brush it off before it marked the white coat she had worked so hard and long to clean. She felt him looking down at her, and glancing up self-consciously she started to explain. And lost the words. And then he bent his head and kissed her. Everything around her seemed to stop, and still, and cease to matter. She could not have said how long it lasted. Not long, probably. It was a gentle kiss but at the same time fierce and sure and full of all the pent-up feelings she herself had fought these past months, and now she knew he had felt them just as she had, and had fought them, too. It was a great release to give up fighting. Give up everything, and float in the sensation.

She'd been sent up to the field to fetch the mare, although perhaps "sent" was too strong a word. Her father had done nothing more than ask her if she'd go, because the mare would not come willingly to any of the men but led them all a tiring chase, whereas for Lydia she came directly, took the halter quietly, and let herself be led downhill as meekly as a lamb. To Lydia, it was a welcome chore. These first days of October had been busy ones that kept her in the garden cutting squash to dry and harvesting the beans for seed and digging her potatoes. There'd been pies to bake and pickles to be scalded- she had left the last to Violet, who made pickles best of any she had tasted- but the garden on its own had wanted more hours in the day than she could give it, and the digging left her shoulders sore, so it had been a great relief to start this day by simply walking up along the orchard wall into the upper field to find the mare. Her father had a mind to go to Hempstead to Aunt Hannah's, and the mare would take him there and back more swiftly than the wagon team. She was a gray, a four-year-old with something of a filly's mischief glinting in her eyes as she stopped grazing, raising her fine head, and watched Lydia approach. "There'd be no point," was Lydia's advice. "I've neither will nor energy to chase you so you'd have to play the game alone, which would be little fun." The mare flicked one ear in acknowledgement of this and gave in gracefully, and although she did not step forward, she at least stood still and did not run. Lydia wasn't entirely sure herself why the mare favored her, but they had shared this rapport from the very first day that her father had brought the mare home as a yearling. Just as a horse could sense a nervous rider or a cruel one, it appeared that the mare could sense Lydia already carried a full share of troubles and did not need more. Whatever the reason, the mare bent her head to the halter and made no complaint and submitted herself to be led.

Sometimes, the scales of justice find a level of their own, without our help... And sometimes, in seeking justice, we don't always serve it.

That's how you have to read this book, you see. You wade through a few sentences, then stop and think about them, then wade through a few more.

There are times when our victories have a cost that we did not foresee, when winning brings us loss.

The strongest soldier cannot balance long upon the blade that does divide his honor and his heart, and whatever way he falls, the cut will kill him.

To be fair, no one yet had complained of the dinner. Since the uncommon hour made it too late for breakfast and still a few hours too early for dinner, it had been a scramble for Violet to make them a meal on short notice. She'd curdled some cream with sweet wine and a grating of cinnamon, serving it warm to the table, and thickened the porridge of Indian meal they had eaten at breakfast and fried it in cakes drizzled thick with molasses, brought pickle and cheese from the cellar and rounded it off with two pies of the first apples picked from their orchard, still fresh from her baking of yesterday.

Ye'll never best your fears until ye face them

You love her." Jean-Philippe did not- would not- deny it. Pierre sighed. "You're like the sheep, Marine, so stupid. Always you look back at where you've come from, what you've been, what you believe you are, and so you do not see the path you should be taking." "I'm a soldier. I don't get to choose my path." He'd meant for that to stop the argument. It didn't. "You're a soldier, so you follow, yes? Then follow this." Pierre's hard finger jabbed him in the chest, above his heart. "God gave you this. He set it like a light within you, so that you could see it well and know the way to go. You follow this, Marine. Don't look behind.