Author of quotes: Penelope Lively

Days merge one into the other until it becomes at last week or last month, and now they are gone from under your fingers like river water.

- Great... - admired Martin when his hand is long and juicy slid down the backup.
Maria nodded. She already decided that painting is one of the best lessons in life. She never painted. But it's even better pool. And the skates. But who knows what else.

The old calendar is the most lifeless thing ever, if only it not last year's diary. But why? thought Maria, indeed, because the time has already passed, it became less interesting, than the time has not yet arrived. She leafed through the back pages of the calendar and remembered January (when I had chickenpox), and March (a birthday, and she started to go into figure skating), and in June she first time she went on the train to cross. These months reminded her of jars with jams of the house in the pantry - complete with stickers. The rest of September, October and their neighbors stood empty and unpredictable.

She welled up with tears, but not bitter - as is usually crying from a sad book. She sometimes wanted to die before. In moments of extreme anger at the parents she cherished the thought of how they will cry over a touching-a small (but incredibly beautiful) monument to a huge cemetery and regret that was cruel.

There are such moments in life are the most enjoyable, they are best enjoyed one thing: the first moment when you walk barefoot in the cold sea when I read some of the books, when in the morning you see that night when you Wake up on the day of birth... There are other moments - their wonder can be felt, only looking each other in the eye. Such as it is now, sadly, thought Maria, because before Martin could finish the sentence immediately turned away and began to examine the room.

I wonder how seagulls are divided: those that are content with absurd life in the Harbor, and those that prefer to endure hardship at sea, or all gulls live here and there, or what? She looked up at the field, running into the distance outside the city, and saw the gulls scattered on ploughed strip, and maybe they have a third way of life on land? Probably the most intelligent seagulls trying your luck everywhere, and then feed there, where more food and be the most bold, but also the strongest.
I on their place would have chosen the sea, she thought. No Apple cores and dirty worms, real fish, even if it is poorly tuned.

Adults, as noted by Maria, often discussing the weather or wondering aloud what might happen. <...> So for a real conversation is much better suited things. Or - animals. Sometimes trees and plants. Sometimes what they say is comforting, sometimes painful, but this is, at least, a real conversation. For spiritual revelations she always chose just the watch. And if so to talk, do almost everything.

In wars fighting children. Think of them possessed by the devil adults, and fighting in these children. I say that, marveling at the human of his youth and forgetting that it is, on the contrary, I'm too old. And yet the faces of all those killed on the Russian front, - millions of dead Germans, dead Ukrainians, Georgians, Tatars, Latvians, Siberians - seem to me to be young. And the same I see faces of the dead at the Somme, or under Paschendale. We, the survivors, became adults and told each other about what actually happened and they died, never not recognize. The newspaper clippings in libraries are full of these childlike faces, smiling with all his teeth on the decks of warships, from the Windows of cars, off of the stretcher.

Regret is meaningless, because useless, to return anything. Beat yourself in the chest is only capable of a prude.

The world has not become safer than it was twenty years ago. But we are still alive, the beast still in the cage, and every year there is increasing hope that, maybe, there it will remain. It is impossible to live in constant anticipation of death - it drains the soul. Monks Lindisfarne must be whistled while working, when I tired to look at the sea; and in the besieged cities, people were making love.

... pouring out their sorrows on others, we are looking for participation, not instruction.

Hard to quarrel with someone who does not want to quarrel in response.

They met at the right time. Accessibility at the right time - the reason is most marriages.

Trust your gut this is the recipe for an interesting life. What's the use to think and plan? Tomorrow you could die. This was a problem Stella, or rather, one of them. She was always stewing in your own anxiety. What can happen, what to do to avoid this? Nothing you can't do! You just have to go with the flow, see where it carries you, grab every opportunity podvorachivaetsya. One pulls behind itself another - that's the whole beauty of life.