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21 " I realized my grief was richer and more nuanced than what lay on the surface. This was about more than the burden of the apothecary. More than James' infidelity. Intermingled in the mess was another subtler secret that James and I had hid from each other for years.We were happy, yet unfulfilled. It was possible, I understood now, to be both at the same time. I was happy with the stability of working for my family yet unfulfilled by my job and burdened by the things I hadn't pursued. I was happy with our desire to someday have children yet unfulfilled by my achievements apart from family life. How had I only just learned that happiness and fulfillment were entirely distinct things? "
― Sarah Penner , The Lost Apothecary
22 " How had I only just learned that happiness and fulfillment were entirely distinct things? "
23 " If felt as though the universe, in her strange and nonsensical way, meant to reach out to me, to remind me of the enthusiasm I once had for the trifling bits of bygone eras, if only I could look beneath the dirt that had accumulated over time. "
24 " Everything placed unto the body removes something from it, calls it forth or represses it. "
25 " Killing and secret-keeping had done this to me. It had begun to rot me from the inside out, and something inside meant to tear me open. "
26 " we were happy, yet unfulfilled. It was possible, I understood now, to be both at the same time. "
27 " The unknown had once been an unpleasant concept to me, but I realized now the opportunity in it. The excitement in it. "
28 " You are not searching for a thing so much as you are searching for an inconsistency of things, or an absence. "
29 " Did everything reinvent itself over time? It was beginning to seem like every person, every place, carried an untold story with long-buried truths resting just beneath the surface. "
30 " The curse of magick, they believe, is that for every reward, there is a great loss. For every spell that goes right, there is something else—in the real, natural world—that goes terribly wrong. "
31 " As a student, I'd been fascinated by the lives of ordinary people, those whose names weren't acknowledged and recorded in textbooks. And now, I'd stumbled on the mystery of one of those nameless, forgotten people - and a woman, no less. "
32 " Did he finally decide that life was too short to be miserable forty hours a week? "
33 " The best apothecary was one who knows intimately the despair felt by her patient, whether in body or heart. "
34 " If you want something different, the only person holding you back is you. "
35 " I suppose this made her even more admirable. Like a dog with a mouthful of sharp teeth who never once attacks, my mother’s knowledge was a weapon she never once used. "
36 " This glass object—delicate and yet still intact, somewhat like myself—was proof that I could be brave, adventurous, and do hard things on my own. "
37 " Maybe I would have my head stuck in fairy tales, as James liked to joke, but wouldn’t that still be better than the nightmare in which I now found myself? "
38 " Healing by way of vengeance. But no such thing existed; it never had. Hurting others had only injured me further. "
39 " every woman has faced a man’s wickedness to some degree. "
40 " I could feel the change in myself at this very moment: the discontent within me seizing the possibility of adventure, an excursion into my long-lost enthusiasm for eras past. "