I find myself being consoled by the fact that some of my own worries are experienced by Anne too, it's like reading advices from an older sister. And it makes me feel less alone in my struggle to adulthood and living up to the principles I have set on myself.
Do you think, Diana, that being grown up is really as nice as we used to imagine it would be when we were children?
'I don't know - there are some nice things about it,' [...] 'But there are so many puzzling things too. Sometimes I feel as if being grown up just frightened me - and then I would give anything to be a little girl again.'
The evening had changed something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred. It must not be with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with shrinking terror of something wholly different - something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth.
Humor is the spiciest condiment in the feast of existence. Laugh at your mistakes but learn from them, make a jest of your difficulties but overcome them.
Maud has a talent in describing nature and making me feel like I am actually in it! I can literally feel the sun on my face, and the smell of the ferns in Violet Vale! I also really admire Maud's ability to craft and combine the similes of nature with life. I mean, look at this:
Anne stood under the willows, tasting the poignant sweetness of life when some great dread has been removed from it. The morning was a cup filled with mist and glamour. In the corner near her was a rich surprise of new-blown, crystal-dewed roses. The trills and trickles of song from the birds in the big tree above her seemed in perfect accord with her mood. A sentence from a very old, very true, very wonderful book came to her lips: 'Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning.'
Here are a few more of my favourite lines:
You don't know love when you see it. You've tricked something out with your imagination that you think love, and you expect the real thing to look like that'
She felt very old and mature and wise - which showed how young she was. She told herself that she longed greatly to go back to those dear merry days when life was seen through a rosy mist of hope and illusion, and possessed an indefinable something that had passed away forever. Where was it now - the glory and the dream?
Oh, Anne, things are so mixed-up in real life. They aren't as clear cut and trimmed off, as they are in novels.
The bloom had been brushed from one little maiden dream. Would the painful process go on until everything became prosaic and humdrum?
It was so fun to return back to P.E.I, living in Patty's Place, experiencing the change that adulthood brings into the life of Anne Shirley, and just seeing the world through Anne's eyes. Just as Phillippa Gordon say "Oh Anne, I wish I was you". I thought of that line when I was 14, and 8 years later, I am still muttering and aspiring to be like Anne... and as much as I want to, I don't think I am anywhere close at all than when I first had the thought :')
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