Circling the Sun

Paula McLain

Top 10 Best Quotes

“We’re all of us afraid of many things, but if you make yourself smaller or let your fear confine you, then you really aren’t your own person at all—are you? The real question is whether or not you will risk what it takes to be happy.”

“Things come that we never would have predicted for ourselves or even guessed at. And yet they change us for ever.”

“Sometimes when you're hurting, it helps to throw yourself at something that will take your weight.”

“I’ve never travelled,” I told her. “Oh, you absolutely should,” she insisted, “if only so that you can come home and really see it for what it is. That’s my favourite part.”

“Proper learning isn’t just useful in society, Beryl. It can be wonderfully yours, a thing to have and keep just for you.”

“Denys understood how nothing ever holds still for us, or should. The trick is learning to take things as they come and fully, too, with no resistance or fear, not trying to grip them too tightly or make them bend.”

“We can only go to the limits of ourselves. Anything more and we give too much away. Then we're not good for anyone.”

“There are things we find only at our lowest depths. The idea of wings and then wings themselves. An ocean worth crossing one dark mile at a time. The whole of the sky.”

“I've sometimes thought that being loved a little less than others can actually make a person, rather than ruin them.”

“Miwanzo is the word in Swahili for “beginnings.” But sometimes everything has to end first and the bottom drop out and every light fizzle and die before a proper beginning can come along.”

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paula-mclain, kenya, karen-blixen, africa