Just the right words

As someone who fancies herself a writer of sorts, I love words.

I love the joy of finding a word that expresses just the right feeling, the preciseness of the phrase that just says it all. So when I read a book (and it actually belongs to me), I’m probably going to write in it and underline words and phrases that are just, well, right. So today, I thought I’d just share a few of my favorite quotes with you. (Don’t you feel lucky?)

“Of course I knew him. I listened to him sing every single day. I wear him every single day. The things he sings about, that’s him. I know him better than I know you. He understands me.” —Ellie in About a Boy by Nick Hornby

“All the privilege I claim for my own sex . . .is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.” —Anne Elliott in Persuasion by Jane Austen

“Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful.” (or something quite similar. . . it’s the first line of the book!) —Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

“God is an artist, I think to myself. I have known this for a long time, seeing His brushwork in the sunrise and sunset, and His sculpting in the mountains and the rivers. But the night sky is His greatest work.” —Donald Miller in Through Painted Deserts

“If you will thank me, let it be for yourself alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you, might add force to other inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny. But your family owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe, I thought only of you.” —Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

“And then there’s the hole inside her, bigger than anything. There’s not a day when I haven’t wondered whether I did the right thing, leaving Bobby. But of course if I hadn’t , there would have been no Mike. And therefore no Grace Ann. Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They’re its finest fruits. Sometimes its only ones.” —Fran Benedetto/Beth Crenshaw in Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen

“But in the end what was important was not that we had so misunderstood one another, but that we had so misunderstood her, this woman who had made us who we were while we barely noticed it.” —Ellen in One True Thing by Anna Quindlen

“I like to think that it isn’t weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, as stand against oblivion and despair, to let my lovers live and to unite them at the end. I gave them happiness, but I was not so self-serving as to let them forgive me. Not quite, not yet.” —Briony in Atonement by Ian McEwan

“Something better than you? . . . Novalee, there isn’t anything better than you.” Forney in Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts

This list could go on and on, but I’ll stop here for now. Comment away!