Belva Plain Quotes

How helpless we are, like netted birds, when we are caught by desire!

Oh, lovely Europe, your flowers and your wine, your bread, your music.

… wore sorrow and anger like a worn-out coat and would not throw it away.

Danger hides in beauty and beauty in danger.

It was unwise to plan too carefully. It took only one great failure to learn that lesson.

Separate from the other unnamed billions who walk the earth, each of these little groups of three or five or twelve, brought together by the shuffle of chance, then welded by blood, sees in itself the whole of earth, or all that matters of it. What happens to one of the three or five or twelve will happen to them all. Whatever grief or triumph may touch any one will touch every one, as they are carried forward into the unknowable under the brilliant, terrifying sun which nourishes all.

All is pattern, all life, but we can’t always see the pattern when we’re part of it.

I stand and listen to people speaking french in the stores and in the street. It’s such a pert, crisp language, elegant as ruffling taffeta.