Sarah Wendell > Quotes

“Being in the habit of saying "Thank you," of making sure that people receive attention so they know you value them, of not presuming that people will always be there--this is a good habit, regardless...make sure to give virtual and actual high-fives to those who rock and rock hard.”
― Sarah Wendell, Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels

“To quote French author François Mauriac, ‘Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who your are' is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread.”
― Sarah Wendell, Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels

“If a person who is content with his life meets someone who makes everything just a little bit more challenging, who both fits and doesn't fit into his life and his routine, to quote Guy Fieri, it is On Like Donkey Kong: swing the rope, jump the barrel, and save the princess.”
― Sarah Wendell, Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels

“Anything written for an audience of mostly women by a community of mostly women is subversive, reflective of the current sexual, emotional, and political status, and actively embraces and undermines that status simultaneously.”
― Sarah Wendell, Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels

“Alphole heroes are just domineering assholes disguising themselves as alpha males. Real alpha males don't need to be assholes.”
― Sarah Wendell, Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels

“really, is there a ruder thing to do than put someone down based on what she reads? It’s a classist, obnoxious, and utterly grotesque use of energy.”
― Sarah Wendell, Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels

“Romance means believing you are worthy of a happy ending.”
― Sarah Wendell, Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels

“Unintentional foreshadowing is unintentionally hilarious.”
― Sarah Wendell

“One way to demonstrate courtship as a matter of course in an established relationship is to remember that courtship is the act of trying to persuade someone to choose you—by demonstrating that you’ve chosen them. If you look at each day of your relationship as another opportunity to choose to be with the person you’re with, you’ll display those feelings of affection in your actions and your words—and you’ll refrain from taking that person’s presence for granted.”
― Sarah Wendell, Everything I Know about Love I Learned from Romance Novels

“[...] all expressions of creativity have a structure at work within them, most particularly those who adhere to a classical form. All romances are the same in the same way that all choreographed ballets are the same. Each ballet is a written sequence of the same steps, but each performance is remarquably different [...]”
― Sarah Wendell, Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels

“... abhorrent and beyond inappropriate, reachable only through hours of hiking into the Realm of Really Goddam Wrong.”
― Sarah Wendell

“I like that motto. Change what sucks into things that don’t suck.”
― Sarah Wendell, Lighting the Flames: A Hanukkah Story

“You don’t see adult gamers being accused of an inability to discern when one is a human driving a real car and when one is a yellow dinosaur driving a Mario Kart, but romance readers hear about their unrealistic expectations of men almost constantly.”
― Sarah Wendell, Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels

“Like Gallant just busted out of Goofus.”
― Sarah Wendell, Lighting the Flames: A Hanukkah Story

“Suddenly she was so tired, a terrible, familiar weariness like what she remembered from the weeks after the accident. It was partly her own physical exhaustion and partly the deep pool of tiredness that came with grief. Emotional hangovers were almost as bad as alcoholic ones. She didn’t feel anything at the moment, no strong emotions that threatened to crash over her. But she was filled with the echoes of how she’d felt earlier, the remnants of sadness that had spun inside her,”
― Sarah Wendell, Lighting the Flames: A Hanukkah Story

“memories of her parents would sneak up on her and hit her from behind at odd moments, sometimes for the most inane of reasons. One of her friends in Iceland, a theology student named Sigridur, had called them “grief tackles,”
― Sarah Wendell, Lighting the Flames: A Hanukkah Story