Quotes From "The Paris Wife" By Paula McLain

Not everyone believed in marriage then. To marry was to say you believed in the future and in the past, too - that history and tradition and hope could stay knit together to hold you up. Paula McLain

They’d scared me and had me thinking about what it meant to be really strong, on my own terms–not just fit and brown from the sun, not just flexible and accommodating. Paula McLain

We knew what we had and what it meant, and though so much had happened since for both of us, there was nothing like those years in Paris, after the war. Life was painfully pure and simple and good, and I believed Ernest was his best self then. I got the very best of him. We got the best of each other. Paula McLain

I preferred to look at the sea, which said nothing and never made you feel alone. Paula McLain

He was a humorist, and everyone knew the funny writers were the most serious sort under their skins. Paula McLain

There are some who said I should have fought harder or longer than I did for my marriage, but in the end fighting for love that was already gone felt like trying to live in the ruins of a lost city. Paula McLain

They love me like a pack of wolves. Ernest Paula McLain

In Paris, you couldn’t really turn around without seeing the result of lovers’ bad decisions. An artist given to sexual excess was almost a cliché, but no one seemed to mind. As long as you were making something good or interesting or sensational, you could have as many lovers as you wanted and ruin them all. Paula McLain

When he craved contact, he stopped in to visit the Cézannes and Monets at the Musée du Luxembourg, believing they had already done what he was striving for–distilling places and people and objects to their essential qualities. Paula McLain