Top 90 Mary Ann Shaffer Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

2. “All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged – after all, what’s good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it’s a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

3. “Humour is the best way to make the unbearable bearable.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

4. “I think you learn more if you’re laughing at the same time.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

5. “Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

6. “Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

Featured in: Reading Quotes

7. “I hope, too, that my book will illuminate my belief that love of art – be it poetry, storytelling, painting, sculpture, or music – enables people to transcend any barrier man has yet devised.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

8. “I don’t want to be married just to be married. I can’t think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can’t talk to, or worse, someone I can’t be silent with.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

9. “Think of it! We could have gone on longing for one another and pretending not to notice forever. This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

10. “My worries travel around in my head on their well worn path.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

11. “Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

12. “If there is Predestination, then God is the devil. by Remy, Ravensbruck concentration camp survivor.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

13. “When I got up this morning the sea was full of sun pennies – and now it all seems to be covered in lemon scrim. Writers ought to live far inland or next to the city dump, if they are ever to get any work one. Or perhaps they need to be stronger-minded than I am.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

14. “Naturally curly hair is a curse, and don’t ever let anyone tell you different.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

15. “This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

16. “Friends, show me a man who hates himself, and I’ll show you a man who hates his neighbors more! He’d have to – you’d not grant anyone else something you can’t have for yourself – no love, no kindness, no respect!”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

17. “I did not throw ‘The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation’ at the audience. I threw it at the elocution mistress. I meant to cast it at her feet, but I missed.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

18. “Thinking to comfort me, they said, “Life goes on.” What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn’t. It’s death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and the next year and forever. There is no end to that, but perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

19. “The first rule of snooping is to come at it sideways.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

20. “Isola doesn’t approve of small talk and believes in breaking the ice by stomping on it.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

21. “Remy watched the sea breathe in and out. Then she said, “It would have been better for her not to have such a heart.” Yes, but worse for the rest of us.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

22. “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society came into being because of a roast pig we had to keep secret from the German soldiers, so I feel a kinship to Mr. Lamb.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

23. “Bin ich zu anspruchsvoll? Ich will nicht heiraten, nur um verheiratet zu sein. Ich kann mir nichts Einsameres vorstellen, als den Rest meines Lebens mit jemandem zu teilen, mit dem ich nicht reden oder, schlimmer noch, mit dem ich nicht schweigen kann.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

24. “While I question her taste, her judgment, her misplaced priorities, and her inappropriate sense of humor, she does indeed have one fine quality – she is honest.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

25. “Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done, to have advanced true friends?” It isn’t. I hope, wherever she is, she has that in her mind.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

26. “We read books, talked books, argued over books and became dearer and dearer to one another.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

27. “I don’t know whether to feel flattered or hunted.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

28. “I much prefer whining to counting my blessings.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

29. “Once two members had read the same book, they could argue, which was our great delight. We read books, talked books, argued over books, and became dearer and dearer to one another.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

30. “She was showing me her treasures, Sophie – her eyes did not leave my face once. We were both so solemn, and I, for once, didn’t start crying; I just held out my arms. She climbed right into them and under the covers with me – and went sound asleep.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

31. “Kit ran up and down the shoreline, inciting the waters to rush in farther and faster. Remy touched my shoulder and smiled. “Elizabeth must have been like that once,” she said, “the Empress of the seas.” I felt as if she had given me a gift – even such a tiny gesture as a touch takes trust – and I was glad she felt safe with me.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

32. “I am to cover the philosophical side of the debate and so far my only thought is that reading keeps you from going gaga.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

33. “His writings have made me his friend.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

34. “My worries travel about my head on their well-worn path, and it is a relief to put them on paper.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

35. “I should pity you, did I not know, that the Mind will make friends of any thing.” A Mind that can make friends of any thing – I thought of that often during the war.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

36. “Women like poetry. A soft word in their ears and they melt – a grease spot on the grass.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

Featured in: Romance Quotes

37. “None of us had any experience with literary societies, so we made our own rules: we took turns speaking about the books we’d read. At the start, we tried to be calm and objective, but that soon fell away, and the purpose of the speaker was to goad the listeners into wanting to read the book themselves. Once two members had read the same book, they could argue, which was our great delight. We read books, talked books, argued over books, and became dearer and dearer to one another.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

38. “A sunny nature? A light heart? I have never been so insulted. Light-hearted is a short step from witless in my book. A cackling buffoon.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

39. “This profusion of questions, exclamations, and tales is the new version of the Society. Its members are spread all over the world, but they are joined by their love of books, of talking about books, and of their fellow readers. We are transformed each time we pass a book along, each time we ask a question about it.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

40. “Then i imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

41. “And down the street – I’m not averting my eyes now – a man in a patched jumper is painting the door to his house sky blue. Two small boys, who have been walloping one another with sticks, are begging him to let them help. He is giving them a tiny brush apiece. So – perhaps there is an end to war.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

42. “I never met a man half so true as a dog. Treat a dog right, and he’ll treat you right. He’ll keep you company, be your friend, and never ask you no questions. Cats is different, but I never held that against ’em.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

43. “That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

44. “I’ve read fast – too impatient not to. But I’ll go back and start over again – reading more slowly this time, so I can take everything in.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

45. “In a good mood I call my hair Chestnut with Gold Glints. In a bad mood, I call it mousy brown.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

46. “People don’t know how chickens can turn on you, but they can – just like mad dogs.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

47. “Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person’s name suddenly pops up everywhere you go? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Mr. Simpless, my parson friend, calls it Grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and “fruitfulness” is drawn in.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

48. “Do you suppose the St. Swithin’s furnace-man was my one true love? Since I never spoke to him, it seems unlikely, but at least it was a passion unscathed by disappointment.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

49. “Isn’t that something-to know your own soul by hearsay, instead of its own tidings? Why should I let a preacher tell me if I had one or not? If I could believe I hada soul, all by myself, then I could listen to its tidings all by myself.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer

50. “Reading keeps you from going ga-ga.”

— Mary Ann Shaffer