Shirley Marr > Quotes

“I swapped my heart for a bargaining chip a long time ago. And here I am turning it over and over again in my hand, not sure what to trade it in for.”
― Shirley Marr, Fury

“I walked up to the window, raised my palm and pressed it against the pane. It left a bloodied handprint. Through the red shape—my red flag, my riot sign—I could see Neil staring at me.”
― Shirley Marr, Fury

“So it is just you and your friends then.”

“Yes. Is that so hard to believe?” Is it because we’re girls? I want to say. You think a bunch of girls are not capable of something like this?”
― Shirley Marr, Fury

“There is no ending to this story because, as I've realised, stories don't have endings, only beginnings.”
― Shirley Marr, Preloved

“Neil once told me you had to become a monster so that you didn't become the victim of one instead. I don't care what anyone says. I believe him.”
― Shirley Marr, Fury

“If you're hoping to party like it's 1999 because Prince told you the world was going to end in 2000, then I'm sorry to disappoint you. We're still here.”
― Shirley Marr, Preloved

“What the hell. Was he going to bring out a gramophone or Morse code machine too?”
― Shirley Marr, Fury

“My uniform felt like a costume. I put on a fresh coat of black nail polish. I twisted up a tube of Revlon Red and put my war paint on. I sharpened the tips of my Fierce Words so they were like a row of shiny arrows.”
― Shirley Marr, Fury

“I grabbed Lexi’s tousled head and kissed her hair. She smelt like John-Paul Gaultier and blood.”
― Shirley Marr, Fury

“I was thinking that if it really was my fault, if every reaction could be traced to an action before, then at the very beginning would be me at the canteen queue with my twenty-dollar note instead of my packed lunch. In turn I could blame my mother for not caring enough and maybe I could blame my father for making my mum stop caring. Maybe all this was supposed to happen. It had been happening all along. It was too hard to try and stop it now. In a twisted way, there was cold comfort in that.”
― Shirley Marr, Fury

“You don’t give your mum enough credit for raising you, Elle. Look at you. Teenage sweetheart with a sugar shell and strychnine centre. We might as well finish speaking the truth now.”
― Shirley Marr, Fury

“You're so mean,' I said. 'You're like one of those people who upload pictures of themselves where they look really hot and the other person looks like shit.”
― Shirley Marr, Fury

“Brian, maybe you are right after all. It was a plan. It had a beginning, middle and an end. We knew what we wanted to do, what we were going to do, and how to do it. We never meant for it to turn out this way, but you’re right. It was a plan. We got up off the floor and for the first time in two weeks, and we put our school uniforms on.”
― Shirley Marr, Fury

“Are you scared of the darkness?" Kevin asks you.
"No," you say.
With your answer, the black sky is at once filled with a million galaxies.
It is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen.
"No," you repeat. "Because you can only see the stars when it is dark.”
― Shirley Marr, A Glasshouse of Stars

“The promise touches your face softly and wraps itself gently around you, planting a seed of hope in your heart.”
― Shirley Marr, A Glasshouse of Stars

“I don't care what your liberal Western education teaches you, but as a young Chinese woman, I demand you have some respect for your father.”
― Shirley Marr, Preloved

“Horror shows teach you nothing about being afraid of ghosts. The experience is much more terrifying in real life.”
― Shirley Marr, Preloved

“Then you had the B-side, which was where the musicians could be creative, even experimental. Life had a nice symmetry, back then.”
― Shirley Marr, Preloved

“I concentrated my thoughts on being the solid, perfect girl in my head, instead of the faded and jaded half-girl I really was.”
― Shirley Marr, Preloved

“Isn’t it funny how you can go up and down the same hill every day and think that’s completely normal? Then suddenly you do the same thing with someone else and you can’t imagine going back to how it was before.”
― Shirley Marr, Countdown to Yesterday

“The night relaxed and unfolded like a hand.”
― Shirley Marr, All Four Quarters of the Moon

“It is then you understand that Kevin isn't angry at the world; he's angry at himself.”
― Shirley Marr, A Glasshouse of Stars

“In a way, we all belong to more than one story.”
― Shirley Marr, All Four Quarters of the Moon

“I want to grow up and do something cool with my life, such as build an orphanage in a third world country like all those saintly Hollywood celebrities. That or, like, cause a scandal and become mega-famous.”
― Shirley Marr, Fury

“When I say microfiche, I'm not talking about really tiny aquatic vertebrae.”
― Shirley Marr, Preloved

“Neil said to me once that in times of desperation, you have to force yourself to make a decision.

It's your choice, he said. Us or them. So choose.”
― Shirley Marr, Fury

“I wasn't supposed to be bonding with him. I was supposed to be getting rid of him.”
― Shirley Marr, Preloved

“Everything sad and everything happy made her want to cry these days. Everything was a feeling, a tiny universe under an immense pressure, keenly felt.”
― Shirley Marr, All Four Quarters of the Moon

“It felt like they were standing on the very edge of the world, where everything in front of them was beyond all that they knew, but full of future adventure and within grasp as everything was part of the cosmos.”
― Shirley Marr, All Four Quarters of the Moon

“Ma Ma still said nothing. Peijing said nothing either, but on the inside, felt everything.”
― Shirley Marr, All Four Quarters of the Moon