Audrey

“Buying a book you've never read is like buying a dress you've never tried on”
― Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road

“And I am sure it is never sadness—a proper, straight natural response to loss—that does people harm, but all the other things, all the resentment, dismay, doubt and self-pity with wh. it is usually complicated. I feel (indeed I tried to say something about it in that lost letter) v. strongly what you say about the ‘curious consolation’ that ‘nothing now can mar’ your joint lives. I sometimes wonder whether bereavement is not, at bottom, the easiest and least perilous of the ways in wh. men lose the happiness of youthful love. For I believe it must always be lost in some way: every merely natural love has to be crucified before it can achieve resurrection and the happy old couples have come through a difficult death and re-birth. But far more have missed the re-birth. Your MS, as you well say, has now gone safe to the Printer.”
― Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy: A Heartrending Memoir of Love, Faith, Grief, and the Healing Power of God, Featuring Unseen Letters from C. S. Lewis

“But I think you are already in the meshes of the net! The Holy Spirit is after you. I doubt if you’ll get away!”
― Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy: A Heartrending Memoir of Love, Faith, Grief, and the Healing Power of God, Featuring Unseen Letters from C. S. Lewis

“If I'm confused, or upset, or angry, if I can go out and look at the stars I'll almost always get back a sense of proportion. It's not that they make me feel insignificant; it's the very opposite; they make me feel that everything matters, be it ever so small, and that there's meaning to life even when it seems most meaningless.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Ring of Endless Light