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61 " It 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 "
― Sarah Penner , The Lost Apothecary
62 " All that I’ve lost…..And yet— this precise moment of breath, the light breeze at the back of my neck, the distant call of some hungry waterfowl on the river, the taste of salt on my tongue— these were all things I had not lost yet. "
63 " The dry, formulaic chapters simply didn't interest me as much as the musty, antiquated albums stored in the archives of old buildings, or the digitised images of faded ephemera - playbills, census records, passenger manifest lists - I found online. I could lose myself for hours in these seemingly meaningless documents... To me, the allure of history lay in the minutiae of life long ago, the untold secrets of ordinary people. "
― Sarah Penner
64 " 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. "
65 " 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? "
66 " But I knew from writing Mrs. Amwell’s letters that the things a person most wanted to say were often the things they should keep tucked away inside. "
67 " Why did we suffer to keep secrets? Merely to protect ourselves, or to protect others? The "
68 " Heartache is shared by all, and favors no rank. "
69 " For many of these women," Nella whispered, "this may be the only place their names are recorded. The only place they will be remembered. It is a promise I made to my mother, to preserve the existence of these women whose names would otherwise be erased from history. The world is not kind to us... There are few places for a woman to leave an indelible mark." I finished tracing an entry, moving on to the next one. "But this register preserves them - their names, their memories, their worth. "