Home > Topic > Mabel

Mabel QUOTES

Mabel QUOTES

1 " As a hedge against possible failure to prove adultery, this alleged “that for a period of time from 1901 and continuing thereafter he [had] kept up and continued an undue, improper, indecorous and licentious association and intimacy with a woman, named Mabel Cochrane, many years his junior, and of questionable character and immoral habits.”[i] Furthermore, Nina accused James of “bestowing upon and receiving marked and improper attention” beginning in the fall of 1901, “indulging in undue and improper familiarity and intimacy” with Mabel Cochrane. "

― Jean Elson , Gross Misbehavior and Wickedness: A Notorious Divorce in Early Twentieth-Century America

2 " On Decoration Day, while everyone else in town was at the cemetery decorating the graves of our Glorious War Dead, Willie Beaner and me, Robert Burns Hewitt, took Mabel Cramm's bloomers and run them up the flagpole in front of the town hall. That was the beginning of all my troubles. "

― Katherine Paterson , Preacher's Boy

3 " Logan's been one of Marietta's most eligible bachelors for too long. Ever since divorcing that useless ditz of a wife, we've all been watching waiting for him to dip his toes into the dating pool again. Nothing. Then, you show up and what happens? He dives straight into the deep end, without taking off his shoes." - Aunt Mabel to Samara "

4 " Then he returned to Mabel and put his mouth to her ear. I'd never let anything happen to you. You know that, don't you? "

― Eowyn Ivey , The Snow Child

5 " At his age, it can be overwhelming and painful to harbor a thought accompanied by too much nostalgia. Not that he wanted to. Mabel, in her final years, had stopped listening to music. The songs of her teenage years brought her back to people and feelings of that time - people she could never see again and sensations that were no longer coming. It was too much for her. There are people who can manage such things. There are those of us who can no longer walk, but can close our eyes and remember a summer hike through a field, or the feeling of cool grass beneath our feet, and smile. Who still have the courage to embrace the past, and give it life and a voice in the present. But Mabel was not one of those people. Maybe she lacked that very form of courage. Or maybe her humanity was so complete, so expansive, that she would be crushed by her capacity to imagine the love that was gone. "

― Derek B. Miller , Norwegian by Night (Sigrid Ødegård #1)

6 " You did not have to understand miracles to believe in them, and in fact Mabel had come to suspect the opposite. To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as you were able before it slipped like water between your fingers "

― Eowyn Ivey , The Snow Child

7 " I can't muster a smile. Even with the knowledge that it's dark outside and light up here, it's hard to believe that he can see us. We should be invisible. We are so alone. Mabel and I are standing side by side, but we can't even see each other. In the distance are the lights of town. People must be finishing their workdays, picking up their kids, figuring out dinner. They're talking to one another in easy voices about things of great significance and things that don't mean much. The distance between us and all of that living feels insurmountable. "

― Nina LaCour , We Are Okay

8 " She had watched other women with infants and eventually understood what she craved: the boundless permission-no, the absolute necessity- to hold and kiss and stroke this tiny person. Cradling a swaddled infant in their arms, mothers would distractedly touch their lips to their babies' foreheads. Passing their toddlers in a hall, mothers would tousle their hair even sweep them up in their arms and kiss them hard along their chins and necks until the children squealed with glee. Where else in life, Mabel wondered, could a woman love so openly and with such abandon? "

― Eowyn Ivey , The Snow Child

9 " You did not have to understand miracles to believe in them, and in fact Mabel had begun to suspect the opposite. To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as you were able before it slipped like water between your fingers. "

― Eowyn Ivey , The Snow Child

10 " The exact science of one molecule transformed into another -- that Mabel could not explain, but then again she couldn't explain how a fetus formed in the womb, cells becoming beating heart and hoping soul. She could not fathom the hexagonal miracle of snowflakes formed from clouds, crystallized fern and feather that tumble down to light on a coat sleeve, white stars melting even as they strike. How did such force and beauty come to be in something so small and fleeting and unknowable? "

― Eowyn Ivey , The Snow Child

11 " Could I have a Sloe Gin Fizz, without the gin?" " What's the point of that, Miss?" the waiter said." Tomorrow morning," Mabel said. "