287 Quotes by Lauren Groff

His eagerness, his deep kindness, these were the benefits of his privilege. This peaceful sleep of being born male and rich and white and American and at this prosperous time, when the wars that were happening were far from home. This boy, told from the first moment he was born that he could do what he wanted. All he needed was to try. Mess up over and over, and everyone would wait until he got it right.

You only have so many days in your life to try to be happy.

She is frightened of her children, because now that they’ve arrived in the world she has to stay here for as long as she can but not longer than they do.

How swift, the slippage from keeping it together to losing it.

A man living in a place that doesn’t change doesn’t expect it ever will.

For many months up there he had looked down and considered how the lifespan of a sunflower reflected the lifespan of man: hopeful, beautiful, brightly shooting out of the ground; broad and strong, with a face turned full and dutiful toward the sun; head so heavy with ripe thoughts it bowed toward the ground, turned brown, lost its bright hair, grew weak on its stalk; mowed down for the long winter.

The stories themselves aren’t what moves him now... What moves him are the shadowy people behind the stories, the workers weary from their days, gathering at night in front of a comforting bit of fire... The world then was no less terrifying than it is now, with our nightmares of bombs and disease and technological warfare. Anything held the ability to set of fear... a nail dropped in a the hay, wolves circling at the edge of the woods...

Paradox of marriage: you can never know someone entirely; you do know someone entirely.

The forest was not dark, because darkness has nothing to do with the forest – the forest is made of life, of light – but the trees moved with wind and subtle creatures.