Romantic Fiction, Reality Shaping and The Work

A few experts on the audiobook vs reading topic:

time.com

Are Audiobooks As Good For You As Reading? Here’s What Experts Say

It depends on the material—and what you hope to get from it.
time.com time.com
Even for people who love books, finding the opportunity to read can be a challenge. Many, then, rely on audiobooks, a convenient alternative to old-fashioned reading. You can listen to the latest bestseller while commuting or cleaning up the house.

But is listening to a book really the same as reading one?

“I was a fan of audiobooks, but I always viewed them as cheating,” says Beth Rogowsky, an associate professor of education at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.

For a 2016 study, Rogowsky put her assumptions to the test. One group in her study listened to sections of Unbroken, a nonfiction book about World War II by Laura Hillenbrand, while a second group read the same parts on an e-reader. She included a third group that both read and listened at the same time. Afterward, everyone took a quiz designed to measure how well they had absorbed the material. “We found no significant differences in comprehension between reading, listening, or reading and listening simultaneously,” Rogowsky says.

Score one for audiobooks? Maybe. But Rogowsky’s study used e-readers rather than traditional print books, and there’s some evidence that reading on a screen reduces learning and comprehension compared to reading from printed text. So it’s possible that, had her study pitted traditional books against audiobooks, old-school reading might have come out on top.

If you’re wondering why printed books may be better than screen-based reading, it may have to do with your inability to gauge where you are in an electronic book. “As you’re reading a narrative, the sequence of events is important, and knowing where you are in a book helps you build that arc of narrative,” says Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and author of Raising Kids Who Read. While e-readers try to replicate this by telling you how much of a book you have left, in a percentage or length of time to the end, this doesn’t seem to have the same narrative-orienting effect as reading from a traditional book.

The fact that printed text is anchored to a specific location on a page also seems to help people remember it better than screen-based text, according to more research on the spatial attributes of traditional printed media. All this may be relevant to the audiobook vs. book debate because, like digital screens, audiobooks deny users the spatial cues they would use while reading from printed text.

The self-directed rhythms associated with reading may also differentiate books from audiobooks.

“About 10 to 15% of eye movements during reading are actually regressive—meaning [the eyes are] going back and re-checking,” Willingham explains. “This happens very quickly, and it’s sort of seamlessly stitched into the process of reading a sentence.” He says this reading quirk almost certainly bolsters comprehension, and it may be roughly comparable to a listener asking for a speaker to “hold on” or repeat something. “Even as you’re asking, you’re going over in your mind’s ear what the speaker just said,” he says. Theoretically, you can also pause or jump back while listening to an audio file. “But it’s more trouble,” he adds.

Another consideration is that whether we’re reading or listening to a text, our minds occasionally wander. Seconds (or minutes) can pass before we snap out of these little mental sojourns and refocus our attention, says David Daniel, a professor of psychology at James Madison University and a member of a National Academy of Sciences project aimed at understanding how people learn.

If you’re reading, it’s pretty easy to go back and find the point at which you zoned out. It’s not so easy if you’re listening to a recording, Daniel says. Especially if you’re grappling with a complicated text, the ability to quickly backtrack and re-examine the material may aid learning, and this is likely easier to do while reading than while listening. “Turning the page of a book also gives you a slight break,” he says. This brief pause may create space for your brain to store or savor the information you’re absorbing.

Daniel coauthored a 2010 study that found students who listened to a podcast lesson performed worse on a comprehension quiz than students who read the same lesson on paper. “And the podcast group did a lot worse, not a little worse,” he says. Compared to the readers, the listeners scored an average of 28% lower on the quiz—about the difference between an A or a D grade, he says.

Interestingly, at the start of the experiment, almost all the students wanted to be in the podcast group. “But then right before I gave them the quiz, I asked them again which group they would want to be in, and most of them had changed their minds—they wanted to be in the reading group,” Daniel says. “They knew they hadn’t learned as much.”

He says it’s possible that, with practice, the listeners might be able to make up ground on the readers. “We get good at what we do, and you could become a better listener if you trained yourself to listen more critically,” he says. (The same could be true of screen-based reading; some research suggests that people who practice “screen learning” get better at it.)

But there may also be some “structural hurdles” that impede learning from audio material, Daniels says. For one thing, you can’t underline or highlight something you hear. And many of the “This is important!” cues that show up in text books—things like bolded words or boxed bits of critical info—aren’t easily emphasized in audio-based media.

But audiobooks also have some strengths. Human beings have been sharing information orally for tens of thousands of years, Willingham says, while the printed word is a much more recent invention. “When we’re reading, we’re using parts of the brain that evolved for other purposes, and we’re MacGyvering them so they can be applied to the cognitive task of reading,” he explains. Listeners, on the other hand, can derive a lot of information from a speaker’s inflections or intonations. Sarcasm is much more easily communicated via audio than printed text. And people who hear Shakespeare spoken out loud tend to glean a lot of meaning from the actor’s delivery, he adds.

However, a final factor may tip the comprehension and retention scales firmly in favor of reading, and that’s the issue of multitasking. “If you’re trying to learn while doing two things, you’re not going to learn as well,” Willingham says. Even activities that you can more or less perform on autopilot—stuff like driving or doing the dishes—take up enough of your attention to impede learning. “I listen to audiobooks all the time while I’m driving, but I would not try to listen to anything important to my work,” he says.

All that said, if you’re reading or listening for leisure—not for work or study—the differences between audiobooks and print books are probably “small potatoes,” he adds. “I think there’s enormous overlap in comprehension of an audio text compared to comprehension of a print text.”

So go ahead and “cheat.” Your book club buddies will never know.
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So I think all that has to do with with normal 3D comprehension and retention, and I don't know how or if it applies to Soul growth potential. I don't know how such a thing would be studied. But it's interesting nonetheless. Personally I feel more of an immersive experience when reading, and feel that I get more out of it, even if the reading is on a screen, vs an audiobook.
 
Candice said:
Do audio books create the same effect? Are they not similar to watching a tv show/movie? Both are passive.
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I think it depends on the person, also i would say that you have to create more in your mind with an audio book than a tv show or movie as you create the images in your mind rather than having them "shown" to you.

I personally prefer audio books, it allows me to get through more material too, in the car, dong the chores etc, and, I am a musician and very sound orientated, others might have a different opinion though fwiw..

For a 2016 study, Rogowsky put her assumptions to the test. One group in her study listened to sections of Unbroken, a nonfiction book about World War II by Laura Hillenbrand, while a second group read the same parts on an e-reader. She included a third group that both read and listened at the same time. Afterward, everyone took a quiz designed to measure how well they had absorbed the material. “We found no significant differences in comprehension between reading, listening, or reading and listening simultaneously,” Rogowsky says.
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the above is from this article. Are Audiobooks As Good For You As Reading? Here’s What Experts Say already posted above ..
 
One of the most important things about these books is the fact that the authors usually present the action from multiple points of view, or at least from the points of view the the main protagonists. This gives the reader insight into the thinking of the main characters. If you relate this to reading Samenow's works such as "Inside the Criminal Mind", and see how following the thinking of a character can teach you a great deal about not only what you are reading, but about yourself and others, then you are making progress.

You cannot get this kind of detail in a movie. Movies are based on getting a story across by showing the characters doing things. They rarely get inside the character's head and detail their thinking.
 
Laura said:
Movies are based on getting a story across by showing the characters doing things. They rarely get inside the character's head and detail their thinking.
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Actually, all the Chinese dramas I watched were based on novels and were between 30 and 50 episodes (no movies). Some of them take that angle where we can hear the main character's thoughts as they progress into the story. We get to know how they feel, what they think, and what they plan to do. I found it was an interesting approach.

The fact that it's visual helped me learn a lot about another culture and its rich history. The way they dress, the way one is supposed to behave/talk/address each other according to their societal status, etc. It's fascinating! Some of those things would not come across in a novel because it would mean too many long descriptions/explanations.

Overall, I feel I benefited positively from this, but I understand that even if it's similar, it might not be related to this experiment.
 
If the dark romance novels books of Georgia Le Carre illustrated some concepts of our reality, it does not seem to be the first time a deeper truth is hidden in romantic fiction.

When reading Further Explorations of the Hyperdimensional Hypothesis (Laura's Grok series), I wondered where Grok was getting stuff from, and looked up the Wiki for Interdimensional UFO hypothesis, which has one sentence:
The first use of the word, as inter-dimensional, is in a novel by Z Gale of 1906.
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The notes say:
Gale, Zona. Romance Island.:
p.173:
"As it is" pursued the prince "your people do perfectly understand lifting a square and placing it upon a square or a triangle upon a triangle. But you do not know anything of about placing a cube upon a cube, or a pyramid upon a pyramid so that both occupy the same space at the same time We of Yaque have mastered that principle also" the prince tranquily concluded, "and all that of which is the alphabet. That is why we are able to keep our island unknown to the world - not to say 'invisble' - "But" he said "your Highness, there is not a mathematician in the civilized world who has not considered that problem and cast it aside, with the word that if fourth-dimensional space exists it cannot be inhabited."
p.176
"The Fourth dimension is only the beginning. We utilize that to isolate our island. But the higher dimensions are gradually being conquered too. Nearly all of us can pass into the Fifth at will 'disappearing,' as you have the word, from the lower dimensions. - Also we pass at will into the Fifth dimension and even higher, and seem to 'disappear'; the only difference is that, there, we should not yet be able to guide one who did not himself understand how to pass there."
p.190
", as if his was not only the cosmopolitanism that knows no municipal or continental aliens of its own class, but a kind of inter-dimensional cosmopolitanism as well"
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The book, also on Gutenberg, is the first listed work in her Wiki bibliography. Without too many spoilers, the concept is that a young successful writer with a recent inheritance invites his former colleagues to an evening dinner at his new spacious New York apartment, at which the editor tells them about an exciting case that he thinks everyone should learn about. That story is about an American heiress who has suffered an attempt on her life by a woman, and nobody knows why. The story interests the male protagonist who negotiates a deal with his old editor to cover the investigation for a few days. After following up on initial clues and getting acquainted with both sides of the matter, it turns out there is a link to a civilization that moved into another dimension a few thousand years ago, and live on an island in the area of what we would call the South Atlantic.

Skipping more details of the plot, here is one except which relates to love:
He listened, and yet there was no making captive the words of the prince in understanding. Prince Tabnit was speaking the English, and every word was clearly audible and, moreover, was probably daily upon St. George's lips. But if it had been to ransom the rest of the world from its night he could not have understood what the prince was saying. Every word was a word that belonged as much to St. George as to the prince; but in some unfathomable fashion the inner sense of what he said for ever eluded, dissolving in the air of which it was a part. And yet, past all doubting, St. George knew that he was hearing the essence of that strange knowledge which the Isle of Yaque had won while all the rest of mankind struggled for it—he knew with the certainty with which we recognize strange forces in a dozen of the every-day things of life, in electricity, in telepathy, in dreams. With the same certainty he realized that what the prince was saying would, if he could understand, lift a certain veil. Here, put in words at last, was manifestly the secret, that catch of understanding without which men are groping in the dark, perhaps that mere pointing of relations which would make clear, without blasphemy, time and the future, rebirth and old existence, it might be; and certainly the accident of personality. Here, crystallized, were the things that men almost know, the dream that has just escaped every one, the whisper in sleep that would have explained if one could remember when one woke, the word that has been thrillingly flashed to one in moments of absorption and has fled before one might catch the sound, the far hope of science, the glimpse that comes to dying eyes and is voiced in fragments by dying lips. Here without penetrating the great reserve or tracing any principle to its beginning, was the truth about both. And St. George was powerless to receive it.
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Alone, St George knows there is something to be known but that he is not able, but then he turns to the female protagonist in what follows:
He turned fearfully to Olivia. Ah—what if she did not guess anything of the meaning of what she was hearing? For one instant he knew all the misery of one whose friend stands on another star. But when he saw her uplifted face, her eager eyes and quick breath and her look divinely questioning his, he was certain that though she might not read the figures of the veil, yet she too knew how near, how near they Stood; and to be with her on this side was dearer—nay, was nearer the Secret—than without her to pass the veil that they touched. Then he looked at Amory; wouldn't old Amory know, he wondered. Wouldn't his mere understanding of news teach him what was happening? But old Amory, the light flashing on his pince-nez, was keeping one eye on the prince and wondering if the chair that he had just placed for Antoinette was not in the draught of the dome; and little Antoinette was looking about her like a rosebud, new to the butterflies of June; and King Otho was listening, languid, heavy-lidded, sensitive to little values, sophisticating the moment; and Little Cawthorne stood with eyes raised in simple, tolerant wonder; and the others, Bennietod, Mrs. Hastings and Mr. Augustus Frothingham, showed faces like the pools in which pebbles might be dropped, making no ripples—one must suppose that there are such pools, since there are certainly such faces. St. George saw how it was. Here, spoken casually by the prince, just as the Banal would speak of the visible and invisible worlds, here was the Sesame of understanding toward which the centuries had striven, the secret of the link between two worlds; and here, of all mankind, were only they two to hear—they two and that motionless company who knew what the prince knew and who kept it sealed within their eyes.

St. George looked at the multitude in swift understanding. They were like a Greek chorus, signifying what is. They knew what the prince was saying, they had the secret and yet—they were no nearer, no nearer than he. With their ancient kindliness naked in their faces, St. George knew that through his love he was as near to the Source as were they. And it was suddenly as it had been that first night when he had stridden buoyantly through the island; for he could not tell which was the secret of the prince and of these people and which was the blessedness of his love.
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Maybe one could say that when some people with sufficient knowledge/love connect, a thinning of the veil between worlds can occur and sometimes more is revealed to them. In the story, that seems to be the case with the hero and heroine, but not with the other companions, including the two lovers, Amory and Antoinette.

Zona Gale was known as a realist author in many of her works, and the Wiki mentions that she "was a suffragist, an activist, and a liberal Democrat" but the Wiki also mentions:
Preface to a Life, published in 1926 was based on a new-found mysticism that grew after the death of her mother in 1923 and her father in 1929. The main character mistakes his inner wisdom and mysticism for madness. She published essays based upon mysticism. In these works, people's problems could be solved through a kind of transcendentalist enlightenment. Critics, who did not enjoy her book and essays, viewed her work unfavorably from that point forward, even when she tried to return to realism.
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Comparing this description with some of the ideas in her 1906 book Romance Island, as quoted above, it can be doubted it was a new-found mysticism. At least the book has plenty of indications that indicated she observed life carefully enough to notice that which can be overlooked, while also being rooted in the ordinary world. And she was rooted in this world too, here is an example of her approach to finding a job after moving to New York.

To get a job, she prepared a list of story ideas relevant for that day for the New York World and persisted until she got two assignments, and then a job.

All of this was so largely sheer adventure and pioneering that none of it now seems to me to have been either will or purpose, but sheer delight.

— Zona Gale
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The author had a certain zest for life and that also is reflected in the characters of the book, Romance Island, where one finds the word inter-dimensional.
 
I went through my Kindle notes and compiled a bunch of quotes from the novels, I've tried to group them the best that I could. Simple and karmic lessons I guess. Maybe someone will find it useful, I've also attached it as a document.

Fate and hope

“Sometimes when life puts us on a path we don’t necessarily want to travel, we discover it was a journey we needed to take in order to secure happiness.”
- Beauty Tempts the Beast, Lorraine Heath

“...some unseen force that drew each person toward the lesson that needed to be learned, the life that needed to be lived, the fulfillment that needed to be achieved. And perhaps ultimate happiness. The disasters of life in retrospect were often its greatest blessings.”
- A Secret Affair, Mary Balogh

“I’ll never ever say that I do not believe in fate,” he said, “or in a definite path that our lives take in order to lead us to fulfillment if only we will take it without wavering.”
- Slightly Sinful, Balogh Mary

“I do believe in fate, Anne-not a blind fate that gives one no freedom of choice, but a fate that sets down a pattern for each of our lives and gives us choices, numerous choices, by which to find that pattern and be happy.”
- Simply Love, Mary Balogh

”Some events, some moments, were dropped deliberately into one’s life, he believed, by an unseen hand. But that hand had no power to dictate one’s response. It was up to the individual concerned to make something out of those events and moments. Or not.”
- Seducing an Angel, Mary Balogh

“And I think that everything that happens in life happens for a purpose. We become stronger people if we are not destroyed by the troubles of life.”
- The Secret Pearl, Mary Balogh

“Everything works out,” she said. “If one faithfully follows the pattern of the dance, it all works out.”
- Someone to Care, Mary Balogh

”Trust yourself. Trust the future. For though we cannot control it or have any real idea of what lies ahead, we are not entirely helpless.”
- Someone to Cherish, Mary Balogh

“But I do not believe we are blown about helplessly by a fate over which we have no control. There would be no point in free will if that were so. We all have the power to decide, to say yes or no, to do something or not to do it, to go in this direction or that.”
- Simply Unforgettable, Balogh, Mary

“Even at its darkest moment, life was a precious gift.”
- Silent Melody, Mary Balogh

“Darkness was only a perception, she realized again, dark from one viewpoint but bright from another.”
- One Night for Love, Mary Balogh

“There always is something beyond the darkness.”
- At Last Comes Love, Mary Balogh

“Since all happiness had been taken from her, she could have concentrated on giving happiness to other people.”
- The Secret Pearl, Mary Balogh

“...given up on resenting or resisting the truths of her life. If you could not change things, if you could not win, rebelling only led to more unhappiness.”
- The Rules of Seduction, Madeline Hunter

“...you will harm only yourself if you remain closed against all the possible goodness the world and life have to offer you.”
- Seducing an Angel, Mary Balogh

“We must, as we grow older and wiser, be able to allow all the … all the pain to seep out of our bones and our souls so that we can start again.”
- At Last Comes Love, Mary Balogh

“...perhaps sometimes life offered second chances even when for ten years one had done little, if anything, to deserve them.”
- Heartless, Mary Balogh

“I believe that life is very generous with us once we have shown the will to take a positive course. It is very ready to keep on opening doors for us.”
- Simply Perfect, Mary Balogh

“...we are reminded that we never can be in total control, that all life asks of us is to do our best to cope with what is handed to us.”
- The Proposal, Mary Balogh

“You must learn to let things happen.”
- The Duke’s Perfect Wife, Jennifer Ashley

“We are all dealt a hand of cards,” he said. “Some of the originals get discarded along the way and new ones get picked up, sometimes not the ones we hoped for. That does not matter. It is how we play them that matters.” “Even if it is a losing hand?” she asked him. “Perhaps it never needs to be,” he said. “For life is not really a card game, is it?”
- The Escape, Mary Balogh

“...life is as it is. We never know what twists and turns it will take or what hand we will be dealt. It is what we do with the unexpected and with that hand that shows our mettle.“
- Only Beloved, Mary Balogh

“...there is always something to smile about and make life worth living.“
- Someone Perfect, Mary Balogh

“Life was too short to be moped away. There was always much over which to rejoice.“
- The Proposal, Mary Balogh

“...reality is studded with small, perfect moments, if you let yourself see them.”
The Perfect Stranger, Anne Gracie

“Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.“
The Perfect Kiss, Anne Gracie

“You cannot expect these things to drop into your lap if you do not reach out to embrace them.“
- A Summer to Remember, Mary Balogh

“...something in her soul knew that if she never reached for joy she would never find it and at the end of her life she would know that she had deliberately turned away from the most precious opportunities her life had offered as a gift.“
- Simply Unforgettable, Balogh, Mary

“Were some catastrophes not really catastrophic at all when one could look back and see the whole picture?“
- Someone to Cherish, Mary Balogh

“Our little affairs are insignificant?” “Far from it,” he said. “Pain is not insignificant. Neither is bewilderment or fear. Or conditions like poverty or homelessness. But somewhere—somewhere—there is peace. It is not even far off. It is somewhere deep inside us, in fact, ever present, just waiting for us to look inward to find it.”
- The Escape, Mary Balogh

“But sometimes, it seemed to her, there was something, some sign, to nudge one along in a certain direction. What one chose to do with that nudge was up to that person.”
The Proposal, Mary Balogh

“Do you believe that sometimes life points out a way for us to follow even if it does not force us into taking that particular path?”
- The Escape, Mary Balogh

“...when one asks a question from one’s deepest need and waits for an answer without straining too desperately to invent it, the answer comes, seemingly from nowhere.”
- Only Beloved, Mary Balogh

Letting go of the past, forgiveness

“Have there been mistakes made? Yes. But that is being human. To expect you’d go through life without ever making the wrong move is to hold yourself to a high standard that is unattainable.”
- Her Favorite Duke, Jess Michaels

“If you ever look back and feel a twinge of guilt, Dawn, let it go. All things happen for a purpose—sometimes a larger purpose than we can possibly see at the time.”
- A Secret Affair, Mary Balogh

“We are our futures. We cannot change what has happened, cannot undo what has been done. All we can do is live for tomorrow rather than for yesterday.”
- Earl of Every Sin, Scarlett Scott

“Going back was never possible, and there was no point in wallowing in regrets for what might have been.”
- Someone to Hold, Mary Balogh

”She was an adult now, a different person from that young girl. She could continue to wallow in the disaster of her past and endlessly punish herself for it, or she could forgive the naïve girl she’d been and accept that she was flawed and imperfect.”
- Marry in Haste, Anne Gracie

”She needed to stop looking back, and to begin looking forward. She needed to stop blaming the young girl she’d been for things that had not been her fault, matters that could not be changed. She needed to forgive herself.”
- The Scoundrel in Her Bed, Lorraine Heath

“It is so stupid,”she told him, “to load oneself down with burdens from the past when the past is over and done with. How can one enjoy the present or shape the future when one is forever looking back into perpetual gloom?”
- Slightly Tempted, Mary Balogh

“...pull out the bad things after a bit and give them a good seeing to. Expose them to sunshine. Imagine if they happened to someone else. I promise it will look different. Then, mebbe you can let it go, and forgive yourself—yes…”
- Bride by Mistake, Anne Gracie

“...one thing I’ve learned in life is not to waste time in fruitless recrimination—it helps nobody and only embitters you.”
- The Accidental Wedding, Anne Gracie

“It seems we’ve both been so tangled up in the past, we were ready to let it ruin our future.”
- Daring Duke, Jess Michaels

“I cannot do anything to change the past. I can influence only the present and the future.”
- The Temporary Wife / A Promise of Spring, Mary Balogh

“...life is what you make of it. There is no point in brooding on the past, however bad it might have been. Life is to be lived. And there is still possibly a great deal left for you as well as for me. Is it not wrong to reject the gift of the future?”
- The Gilded Web, Mary Balogh

“It is a mistake always to blame oneself for the past. And probably a mistake to brood on the past too.”
- The Temporary Wife / A Promise of Spring, Mary Balogh

“I can’t change the past or how it affects me and my children now, but I can decide to live my life despite my terrible choices. If I was afraid of being hurt by others and what they say to me, I would have to live all my life in hiding. I won’t do that.”
- To Beguile a Beast, Hoyt Elizabeth

“Regrets are pointless,” she said. “They do not change whatever that thing is that one may regret if one allows oneself to do so.”
- Someone to Cherish, Mary Balogh

“I regret much in my life, but there is no point, is there? At this moment we are both in exactly the spot to which we have brought ourselves through our birth and our life experiences, through the myriad choices we have made along the way. The only thing over which we have any control whatsoever is the very next decision we make.”
- The Proposal, Mary Balogh

“...is foolish to regret anything from one’s past. Everything that happens helps to shape us into the people we are.”
- Web of Love, Mary Balogh

“...everything that happens in life can serve a positive purpose, that no time is wasted unless we refuse to learn the lesson that is there in that apparently wasted time.”
- Slightly Tempted, Balogh, Mary

“No time is really wasted unless one never learns the lessons that it offers.”
- Only a Kiss, Mary Balogh

“Accepting the past as irrevocable had been a big part of his victory.”
- The Sins of Lord Easterbrook, Madeline Hunter

“She had a choice to make, here and now: live in the ruins of her past or make a new future. Yearn pointlessly for what could not be or try to build something practical and real.”
- The Perfect Stranger, Anne Gracie

”I learned that I never wanted to do anything to make another person feel the despair I felt at that moment. It is survivable, and because of it, perhaps I’m a better person than I might have been otherwise.”
- Beauty Tempts the Beast, Lorraine Heath

”No one is innocent. We all do stupid things, even when we know they are stupid, and even when we know we are causing unhappiness for someone else and for ourselves. Forgiveness is given despite all those things.”
- Someone Perfect, Mary Balogh

“It is not easy to hate,” he said, “when one has lived long enough to know that everyone has a difficult path to walk through life and does not always make wise or admirable choices.”
- The Proposal, Mary Balogh

“I’m discovering that you can’t look at someone and know the trials they face. We all wear masks.”
- The Duchess in His Bed, Lorraine Heath

”Let it all go, the bitterness. People do behave badly, you know. We all do on occasion. We owe it to one another to give a second chance, and sometimes even a third and fourth.”
- The Temporary Wife / A Promise of Spring, Mary Balogh

“Do not allow bitterness and the injustice with which you were treated change you forever. Live a life filled with love. It is, ultimately, all that matters.”
- Someone Perfect, Mary Balogh

“Perhaps we ought not to fear for such people but for ourselves whose experience has taught us not to trust one another or life itself.”
- Slightly Scandalous, Mary Balogh

“We are all in need of forgiveness,” she said. “How can we expect to receive it if we are not also prepared to give it?”
- The Gilded Web, Mary Balogh

”Without trust there is . . . nothing.”
- Someone to Wed, Mary Balogh

”Resentment and hatred and grudges are a poison that harms the person who harbors them far more than it harms anyone else.”
Someone to Trust, Mary Balogh

”...people often hurt themselves more than anyone else when they cling to old hatreds and resentments...”
- Only Beloved, Mary Balogh

”Hatred, grudges were a deadly poison to the soul.”
- Slightly Tempted, Mary Balogh

”...life was not made up of neat blacks and whites but of a vast whirlwind of varying shades of gray. He would no longer beat himself to a pulp over what he had done. Perhaps in doing it he had averted a greater evil. And perhaps not. Who was to know? He could only continue his journey through life, hoping that along with experience he was picking up some wisdom. If there was some darkness in his soul, then there was also a considerable amount of light.”
- The Proposal, Mary Balogh

”He was not defined by what he had done or not done in the past ten years. “Perhaps in recognizing how one ought not to live, one can learn how to live,” she said.”
- Only a Kiss, Mary Balogh

“Now I must live with the consequences of the choice I made. And I will not call it the wrong choice. That would be foolish and pointless. That choice led me to everything that has happened since, including this very moment, and the choices I make today or tomorrow or next week will lead me to the next and next present moments in my life. It is all a journey, Miss Jewell. I have come to understand that that is what life is all about-a journey and the courage and energy always to take the next step and the next without judgement about what was right and what was wrong.”
- Simply Love, Mary Balogh

“I do not believe there is right or wrong,” he said. “There is only doing what one must do under given circumstances and living with the consequences and weaving every experience, good and bad, into the fabric of one’s life so that ultimately one can see the pattern of it all and accept the lessons life has taught. We were never expected to achieve perfection in one lifetime, Gwendoline. Religious people would say that is what heaven is for. I think that would be a shame. It’s too easy and too lazy. I would prefer to think that perhaps we are given a second chance—and a third and a thirty-third—to get everything right.”
- The Proposal, Mary Balogh

“...there were no absolute answers after all, not, at least, to many of the thornier problems of life.”
- The Gilded Web, Mary Balogh

“And at the end of the day forgive yourself.”
- Silent Melody, Mary Balogh

Courage, facing the unknown

“Life seldom rewards the faint of heart.”
- The Duchess in His Bed, Lorraine Heath

“...good to step out into the unknown on occasion. How else can we grow and acquire knowledge and experience and wisdom? And the unknown is not always or even often unsafe.”
- Simply Perfect, Mary Balogh

“Fear must be challenged, I have found. It is a powerful beast if it is allowed the mastery.”
- The Proposal, Mary Balogh

“When something that needs to be done is impossible to do,” Estelle said, “I have always found that the only possible course of action is to do it anyway.”
- Someone Perfect, Mary Balogh

“...heard a military man say once that it didn’t matter what decision you made, the important thing was to make the decision, and then throw everything you had into making it work.”
- Marry in Secret, Anne Gracie

“Old soldier’s trick. Don’t look forward, don’t look back. Just live.”
- To Catch a Bride, Anne Gracie

“...when one had taken that first determined step out into the rest of one’s life, one had to keep on striding forward.”
- Someone to Hold, Mary Balogh

“The only way to cope, when your life was turned upside down, was to put one step in front of the other and do whatever came next.”
- The Accidental Wedding, Anne Gracie

“Life was made up of choices, all of which, even the smallest, made all the difference to the rest of one's life.“
- The Proposal, Mary Balogh

“...that is what life is all about-a journey and the courage and energy always to take the next step and the next without judgment about what was right and what was wrong.”
- Simply Love, Mary Balogh

“Prolonged misery is often at least partially self-inflicted.”
- Only Beloved, Mary Balogh

“...do you live your life in fear, or do you take it like an orange and wring every last sweet drop from it? That is your choice.”
- To Catch a Bride, Anne Gracie

“...it’s best to face something head on, smash it, and move on with your life. Lingering and wondering, waiting and worrying . . . that kills you.”
- The Wicked Deeds of Daniel Mackenzie, Jennifer Ashley

“The only way to conquer fear was to face it.”
- A Mackenzie Yuletide, Jennifer Ashley

”...if we can only face our worst fears and move forward into them and through them instead of cowering or turning tail and running as far from them as we can, then we will never have to fear anything ever again.”
- Only a Promise, Mary Balogh

”All people, he thought with a sigh as he left the room, had their own demons to be fought—or not fought. Perhaps that was what life was all about. Perhaps life was a test to see how well we deal with our own particular demons, and how much sympathy we show others as they tread their own particular path through life.”
- The Proposal, Mary Balogh

“One cannot always run and hide from life,” he said. “It is best never even to try, but simply to face what must be faced.”
- Slightly Married, Mary Balogh

“If you was never frightened, sir, you would never find out what you was made of and what you was capable of doing. You would never become a better man than what you started out being.”
- Someone to Honor, Mary Balogh

“Like your scars with you, it will always be with me and it will always affect my life. But I will not let it destroy me.”
- The Secret Pearl, Mary Balogh

“...my life is in my own hands, that I cannot blame other people for anything that might go wrong with it.”
- The Secret Pearl, Mary Balogh

“Never accept inferior treatment, and do not look down on your background for the things that cannot be changed, and for which you cannot be blamed. What is important is what you have done with your life, and the skills you have learned, and most of all your heart.”
- His Captive Lady, Anne Gracie

“Some people relished being mean spirited and unkind, and ignoring them was the most effective ammunition against such miscreants.”
- Prince of Persuasion, Scarlett Scott

“The world would never be rid of unkind people who compensated for their own insecurities by dragging down other happier, more successful people to their own level through their gossip. They were to be heartily ignored.”
- Someone to Remember, Mary Balogh

“We can always change, grow, evolve into a far better version of ourselves. It is surely what life is for.”
- Only a Kiss, Mary Balogh

”Whatever you run from is inside you.”
- The Sins of Lord Easterbrook, Madeline Hunter

”What he would be running from was deep inside himself. He must confront it if there was to be a future.”
- Silent Melody, Mary Balogh

”The trouble with running away is that you must always take yourself with you.”
- Only a Promise, Mary Balogh

”Failure must be taken in one’s stride just as success must be. If one kept a cool, sensible head and learned from one’s mistakes, the successes would ultimately outweigh the failures…”
- Someone to Wed, Mary Balogh

“Feelings must have been unbearable to you as a boy, and so you cut them off. But when there are no feelings, Jasper, there can be no compassion either—for other people or even for yourself. You end up treating other people as you have been treated.”
- Then Comes Seduction, Mary Balogh

“Sometimes I think that this new life will turn out happily for all of us if we just have the courage to grasp what it offers.”
- First Comes Marriage, Mary Balogh

“My happiness has to come from within myself or it is too fragile a thing to be of any use to me and too much of a burden to benefit any of my loved ones.”
- First Comes Marriage, Mary Balogh

“...pain was not confined to her alone, that other people suffered, that suffering could either isolate the sufferer or lead her out of the prison of her aloneness into a shared suffering and a shared courage, and an empathy that reached to the ends of the world.”
- Someone to Wed, Mary Balogh

“It was very easy sometimes to believe one was the only person who had ever suffered troubles, Wren thought, especially when one totally isolated oneself.”
- Someone to Wed, Mary Balogh

“It was always a mistake to believe that one had been singled out for unusual suffering.”
- Simply Love, Mary Balogh

”...learning to embrace that black emptiness, and I discovered that actually it was an infinity of light and possibility. I learned that my real self is inner and infinite and indestructible and quite independent of circumstances or labels.”
- Someone to Honor, Mary Balogh

”...alone deep within herself. It could be frightening. Or it could lead one to make a friend of the aloneness and to be stronger and even happier as a result.”
- Someone to Honor, Mary Balogh

”...look into the darkest corners of my life and to bring light there.”
- Slightly Tempted, Mary Balogh

”There are far worse afflictions than loneliness.” “Are there?” In the faint light she could see that his face was turned toward her. “The worst thing about loneliness,” she said, “is that it brings one face-to-face with oneself. That can also be the best thing about it, depending upon one's character. If one is strong, self-knowledge can be the best knowledge one can ever acquire.”
- No Man's Mistress, Mary Balogh

“...sometimes pain had to be acknowledged and even touched so that one could move into it and through it and past it.”
- Simply Love, Mary Balogh

“We all suffer, Colin,” she said. “It is the human condition. No one escapes, even those who may appear to others to live charmed lives. But we all have the choice of whether to be defined by the negatives in our lives or to make of our present and future and our very selves what we want them to be.”
- Someone to Trust, Mary Balogh

“Life was a continuous series of tests, all or some or none of which one might pass or fail and learn from or not.“
- Someone to Wed, Mary Balogh

“But miracles did not always come in a single flash of time. Sometimes they came with every step forward one took when every instinct urged two steps back...”
- Someone to Wed, Mary Balogh

“Everything matters. Everything you do touches someone in some way...”
- The Duke’s Perfect Wife, Jennifer Ashley

Love

“We are in the habit, I think, of believing that love is one of the weakest of human emotions. But it is not weak at all. Perhaps it is the force that runs through everything and binds everything.”
- Simply Love, Mary Balogh

“Love is a mysterious thing, Miss Hall. It defies logic and reason, yet it is the most powerful force in the world.”
- The Arrangement, Mary Balogh

“...love is not entirely physical or mental or even emotional. It is larger than any of those things. It is the very essence of life itself, is it not?”
- Slightly Wicked, Mary Balogh

”...love— if he dared use that word—did not reside in any one person. His father had let him down. So had Con. But love had not. Love remained to him both as something other people gave him and, more important, as something he was capable of giving.”
- First Comes Marriage, Mary Balogh

”Love does not have to be portioned out, Lizzie. It is the one thing that never diminishes when one gives it away. Indeed, it only grows.”
- Simply Perfect, Mary Balogh

“...for love can only give. As soon as it began to demand something in return, even if only a promise, then it was no longer love.”
- The Devil's Web, Mary Balogh

“Love is liking and companionship and respect and trust. Love does not dominate or try to possess. Love thrives only in a commitment to pure, mutual freedom.”
- Slightly Tempted, Mary Balogh

“It is an attitude to life directly opposed, perhaps, to that attitude which sees life only as a series of duties to be performed or burdens to be borne.”
- Slightly Dangerous, Mary Balogh

“It is what life is all about. It is openness and trust and vulnerability.”
- Then Comes Seduction, Mary Balogh

“Love takes a leap of faith. It’s an act of courage.”
- Marry in Scarlet, Anne Gracie

“Love is essentially a surrender.”
- To Seduce a Sinner, Elizabeth Hoyt

“There is something infinitely better than happily ever after. There is happiness. Happiness is a living, dynamic thing, Eve, and has to be worked on every moment for the rest of our lives.”
- Slightly Married, Mary Balogh

“Oh, not happily-ever-after, Wulfric,” she said. “That is such a static thing. I don’t want happily-ever-after. I want happiness and life and quarreling and making up and adventure and—”
- Slightly Dangerous, Mary Balogh

“...in order to feel true and lasting love, once-in-a-lifetime-if-one-were-lucky real love, one must be prepared to let oneself fall. To give oneself up utterly to the other person if need be.
- To Desire a Devil, Elizabeth Hoyt

“No one could tell you about love or romance or what would happen if you married and the romance dwindled away. You could only find out for yourself. Or not find out. You could face the challenge or you could turn away from it. You could be a hero or a coward. Was there any answer to anything in life? Life was a bit like walking a thin, swaying, fraying tightrope over a deep chasm with jagged rock and a few wild animals waiting at the bottom. It was that dangerous - and that exciting.”
- The Proposal, Mary Balogh

”She loved him because of his imperfections, not in spite of them. One day she would make him see himself the way she did.”
- Duke of Debauchery, Scott, Scarlett

“Tell her everything,” he said. “Your sense of guilt will linger. It will always be part of you. But sharing it, allowing people to love you anyway, will do you the world of good. Secrets need an outlet if they are not to fester and become an unbearable burden.”
- The Proposal, Mary Balogh

“Bare your soul.”
- Lady Isabella's Scandalous Marriage, Jennifer Ashley

“No love can flourish and grow without honesty.”
- My Once and Future Duke, Caroline Linden

“Hearts do not die,” Catriona insisted. “We are all capable of healing and loving again.”
- Earl of Every Sin, Scarlett Scott

“...you must not give up on love even though it seems as if everyone you loved betrayed you.”
- First Comes Marriage, Mary Balogh

“Even when no one loves you, there is always someone to love, someone who needs to be loved. Always. You just have to look outside yourself.”
- The Perfect Rake, Anne Gracie

“It is never too late. There are always other people to whom you can give your love. Some of it might be given to yourself. It is time you came out into the light again...”
- The Temporary Wife / A Promise of Spring, Mary Balogh

”We have to love ourselves, do we not? Or we are incapable of loving anyone else.”
- Someone to Cherish, Mary Balogh

”If you do not love yourself, you cannot possibly love anyone else.”
- The Proposal, Mary Balogh

Balance of opposites

“...life and pain go hand in hand,” she said. “One cannot live fully unless one faces pain at least occasionally. You must surely agree.”
- Someone to Love, Mary Balogh

”...disturbed by his succinct view of the world, for it was not so clear and concise, nor so dark and bleak as he would have it. “Life is night and day. It is summer and winter, warmth and ice, blossoming flowers and frozen ground. Life is spring and fall, new beginnings, and withered deaths. It is pain and pleasure. But you are wrong to think it ugly, Alessandro. The disparities of life are where its beauty hides.”
- Earl of Every Sin, Scarlett Scott

“Life is serious,” he said. “No, it is not.” She looked back at him. “Not always or even frequently. There is always something to marvel over. There is always joy to be found. There is always the possibility of laughter in almost any situation.”
- First Comes Marriage, Mary Balogh

“It is what we do with the pain, though, how we allow it to shape our character and actions and relationships that matters. But life is not unalloyed gloom. One must absolutely not allow pessimism or cynicism to send one into a deep depression. There is much joy too.”
- Only a Promise, Mary Balogh

”...nothing is static, that nothing is assured. All of us suffer the troubles of life sooner or later, no matter how carefully we have planned our lives.” “Ah, but life is not all troubles,” she said. ”There are delights too, pinnacle moments of extreme joy and longer spells of contentment..”
- Once Upon a Dream, Mary Balogh, Grace Burrowes

“...the necessity of darkness in our lives as well as light—…”
- Then Comes Seduction, Mary Balogh

“Could we ever be happy if we did not at least occasionally experience misery?”
- Then Comes Seduction, Mary Balogh

“But how could you ever feel joy,” he asked her, “if you had not also known dreariness and suffering?”
- The Escape, Mary Balogh

”But pain was something that life inevitably brought with it. If there was no pain, there was no real living and therefore no possibility of happiness.”
- Simply Magic, Mary Balogh

”Perhaps they would not be so happy now if they had not had to go through that long, dark night of pain and brokenness. Disturbing thought.”
- Only a Kiss, Mary Balogh

”...the way life is. It is a continual balance of opposites. There are hatred and violence, for example, and there are kindness and gentleness.”
- The Proposal, Mary Balogh

“The years of my convalescence were the worst of my life,” he said, “and also, strangely enough, the best. Life has a habit of being like that, giving and taking in equal measure, a balance of opposites.”
- The Escape, Mary Balogh

“How strange life is. Good things can arise from bad.”
- Only a Kiss, Mary Balogh

“...there is always an indestructible beauty at the heart of darkness.”
- A Secret Affair, Mary Balogh
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thorbiorn said:
If the dark romance novels books of Georgia Le Carre illustrated some concepts of our reality, it does not seem to be the first time a deeper truth is hidden in romantic fiction.

When reading Further Explorations of the Hyperdimensional Hypothesis (Laura's Grok series), I wondered where Grok was getting stuff from, and looked up the Wiki for Interdimensional UFO hypothesis, which has one sentence:


The notes say:


The book, also on Gutenberg, is the first listed work in her Wiki bibliography. Without too many spoilers, the concept is that a young successful writer with a recent inheritance invites his former colleagues to an evening dinner at his new spacious New York apartment, at which the editor tells them about an exciting case that he thinks everyone should learn about. That story is about an American heiress who has suffered an attempt on her life by a woman, and nobody knows why. The story interests the male protagonist who negotiates a deal with his old editor to cover the investigation for a few days. After following up on initial clues and getting acquainted with both sides of the matter, it turns out there is a link to a civilization that moved into another dimension a few thousand years ago, and live on an island in the area of what we would call the South Atlantic.

Skipping more details of the plot, here is one except which relates to love:

Alone, St George knows there is something to be known but that he is not able, but then he turns to the female protagonist in what follows:

Maybe one could say that when some people with sufficient knowledge/love connect, a thinning of the veil between worlds can occur and sometimes more is revealed to them. In the story, that seems to be the case with the hero and heroine, but not with the other companions, including the two lovers, Amory and Antoinette.

Zona Gale was known as a realist author in many of her works, and the Wiki mentions that she "was a suffragist, an activist, and a liberal Democrat" but the Wiki also mentions:

Comparing this description with some of the ideas in her 1906 book Romance Island, as quoted above, it can be doubted it was a new-found mysticism. At least the book has plenty of indications that indicated she observed life carefully enough to notice that which can be overlooked, while also being rooted in the ordinary world. And she was rooted in this world too, here is an example of her approach to finding a job after moving to New York.


The author had a certain zest for life and that also is reflected in the characters of the book, Romance Island, where one finds the word inter-dimensional.
Click to expand...

Maybe this can be used in a video project?
 
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