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Circling the Sun QUOTES

Circling the Sun QUOTES

1 " Flying demanded more courage and faith than I actually possessed, and it wanted my best, my whole self. I would have to work very hard to be any good at it at all, and be more than a little mad to be great, to give my life over to it. But that's just what I meant to do. "

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

2 " I had come alive here...this was my home, and though one day it would all trickle through my fingers like so much red dust, for as long as childhood lasted it was a heaven fitted exactly to me. A place I knew by heart. The one place in the world I'd been made for. "

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

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

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

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

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

5 " Denys had a way of seeing everything as if he knew it would never be there exactly the same again. He 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 resistence or fear, not trying to grip them too tightly or make them bend. "

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

6 " We can only go to the limits of ourselves—I’ve learned that if nothing else. Anything more and we give too much away. Then we’re not good for anyone. - Beryl Markham "

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

7 " Mary Lovell’s Straight On Till Morning: The Life of Beryl Markham was the first biography to bring Beryl to light, in 1987, and her pioneering efforts and careful research have been crucial to my own and other writers’ abilities to imagine Beryl’s life. Mary Lovell also compiled Beryl Markham’s stories in The Splendid Outcast, a collection that wouldn’t have been available otherwise, and for that "

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

8 " You can take a cub from the savannah as they have, and raise it like a pet if you like. In a cage, as some do, or running free like Paddy. You can feed it fresh meat so it never learns to hunt and brush its coat so it carries a human smell wherever it goes—but know that what you’ve done is twist something natural into something else. And you can never trust on unnatural thing. - Charles Clutterbuck "

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

9 " 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. "

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

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

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

11 " 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. "

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

12 " 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. "

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

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

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

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

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

15 " 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. "

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

16 " 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. "

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

17 " How close people could be to us when they had gone as far away as possible, to the edges of the map. How unforgettable. "

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

18 " 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.” She was referring to Jock, but her words made me think of other things, too. “Are you happy, Karen?” “Not yet. But I mean to be. "

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

19 " I have fought for independence here, and freedom, too. More and more I find they’re not at all the same thing. "

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun

20 " Searching out something important and going astray look exactly the same for a while, in fact. "

― Paula McLain , Circling the Sun