"Love. It was the beginning and end of everything, the foundation and the ceiling and the air in between."
"Some women nodded, others shook their heads. I would have killed myself before I let one of them move into my house. Would you Helen? Would you really?"
"I am a mother and mothers don’t have the luxury of falling apart in front of their children, even when they are afraid, even when their children are adults."
"She had tried to be loved by him; more important, she had tried to keep loving him, but in the end, one was impossible as the other."
"We are all changed by this war, Soph. Daniel is your brother now that Rachel is ... gone. Truly your brother. And this baby, he or she is innocent of ... his or her creation.''It's hard to forget,' she said quietly. 'And I'll never forgive.''But love has to be stronger than hate, or there is no future for us.'Sophie sighed. 'I suppose,' she said, sounding too adult for a girl of he"
"It is nearly impossible.''Nearly impossible and impossible are not the same thing."
"I just want to keep you safe.I smile. Americans can be so naive."
"Vianne knelt down beside Sarah, she felt for a pulse and found none. The silence turned sour, thick; all Vianne could think about was the sound of this child's laughter and how empty the world would be without it."
"My skin has the crinkled appearance of wax paper that someone has tried to flatten and reuse. My eyes fail me often—in the darkness, when headlights flash, when rain falls. It is unnerving, this new unreliability in my vision. Perhaps that’s why I find myself looking backward. The past has a clarity I can no longer see in the present."
"it’s better to be bold than meek.If you jump off a cliff at least you’llfly before you fall"
"Magic to be its best must be unexpected."
"Was Vianne really supposed to let Sophie starve to prove her loyalty to France?"
"... allow me to be an old man for a moment and to remind a young girl who is used to being impulsive that there can be none of that anymore."
"I had forgotten how gently time passes in Paris. As lively as the city is, there's a stillness to it, a peace that lures you in. In Paris, with a glass of wine in your hand, you can just be.All along the Seine, street lamps come on, apartment windows turn golden."It's seven," Julien says, and I realize that he has been keeping time all along, waiting. He is so American. No sitting idle, forgetting oneself, not for this young man of mine."
"We are outside again, walking, when he takes a bite and stops dead. "Wow," he says after a minute. Then, "Wow," again.I smile. Everyone remembers their first taste of Paris. This will be his."
"If I had told him the truth long ago, or had danced and drunk and sung more, maybe he would have seen me instead of a dependable, ordinary mother. He loves a version of me that is incomplete. I always thought it was what I wanted; to be loved and admired. Now i think perhaps I'd like to be known."