Lines Revisited

Book & coffee-stained bookmark

I finished reading The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy yesterday.  As I frequently do when reading books, I jotted down page numbers containing lines that I wanted to revisit and mull over a bit more.  Here are some of those lines - except for the last two spoken by the main character, Queenie...

 Perhaps I took my mother more literally than she intended, but I applied her rule to my life, after all, we are all searching for them, the rules.  We pick them up from the strangest places, and if they appear to work once we can live a whole lifetime by them, regardless of the unhappiness and difficulty they may later bring.

I am starting again, I thought.  Because that is what you do when you reach the last stop.  You make a new beginning.

A tardy person can become a punctual one, if she chooses.  You don't have to keep being the thing you have become.  It is never too late.

Sometimes you have to do something with your pain because otherwise it will swallow you.

I'm not saying it was an unhappy marriage, only that it had become a well-worn one, like an old coat you stop looking after.

Don't try to see ahead to the nice bits.  Don't try to see ahead to the end.  Stay with the present, even if it is not so good.  And consider how far you've already come. (Sister Mary Inconnu)

It takes a long time to learn that there are other ways of doing things.  It doesn't just happen overnight.  (Sister Mary Inconnu)

Each of these could be the basis of a blog post, 

but I'll just let them speak for themselves.

Do any of them resonate with you?