Annabel > Annabel's Quotes

“And if you’re going to blame your parents for the bad stuff, you also have to give them credit for the good stuff.”
― Matthew Perry, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing

“I think you actually have to have all of your dreams come true to realize they are the wrong dreams.”
― Matthew Perry, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

“I’m not the biggest fan of confrontation. I ask a lot of questions. Just not out loud.”
― Matthew Perry, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

“Now, all these years later, I’m certain that I got famous so I would not waste my entire life trying to get famous. You have to get famous to know that it’s not the answer. And nobody who is not famous will ever truly believe that.”
― Matthew Perry, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing

“I am me. And that should be enough, it always has been enough. I was the one who didn’t get that. And now I do. I’m an actor, I’m a writer. I’m a person. And a good one at that. I want good things for myself, and others, and I can continue to work for these things. There is a reason I’m still here. And figuring out why is the task that has been put in front of me. And it will be revealed. There is no rush, no desperation. Just the fact that I am here, and I care about people, is the answer. Now when I wake up, I wake up curious, wondering what the world has in store for me, and I for it. And that’s enough to go on.”
― Matthew Perry, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

“And have you ever stood on the water's edge and tried to stop the wave? It goes on regardless of what we do, regardless of how hard we try. The ocean reminds us that we are powerless in comparison.”
― Matthew Perry, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing

“The Heir and the Spare—there was no judgment about it, but also no ambiguity. I was the shadow, the support, the Plan B. I was brought into the world in case something happened to Willy. I was summoned to provide backup, distraction, diversion and, if necessary, a spare part. Kidney, perhaps. Blood transfusion. Speck of bone marrow. This was all made explicitly clear to me from the start of life’s journey and regularly reinforced thereafter.”
― Prince Harry, Spare

“What hell, being an adult!”
― Prince Harry, Spare

“It wasn’t that she felt no emotions. On the contrary, I always thought that Granny experienced all the normal human emotions. She just knew better than the rest of us mortals how to control them.”
― Prince Harry, Spare

“Is each generation doomed to unwittingly repeat the sins of the last?”
― Prince Harry, Spare

“He assured me that people do stupid things, say stupid things, but it doesn’t need to be their intrinsic nature. I was showing my true nature, he said, by seeking to atone. Seeking absolution.”
― Prince Harry, Spare

“It occurred to me then that identity is a hierarchy. We are primarily one thing, and then we're primarily another, and then another, and so on, until death- in succession. Each new identity assumes the throne of Self, but takes us further from our original self, perhaps our core self- the child. Yes, evolution, maturation, the path towards wisdom, it's all natural and healthy, but there's a purity to childhood, which is diluted with each iteration.”
― Prince Harry, Spare

“She said: That was everything. She said: That is a man. My love. She said: That is not a Spare.”
― Prince Harry, Spare

“In this mixed-up world, this pain-filled life, we’d done it. we’d managed to find each other.”
― Prince Harry, Spare

“In some ways he was my mirror, in some ways he was my opposite. My beloved brother, my arch-nemesis, how had that happened?”
― Prince Harry, Spare

“It struck me at some point that the whole basis of education was memory. A list of names, a column of numbers, a mathematical formula, a beautiful poem—to learn it you had to upload it to the part of the brain that stored stuff, but that was the same part of my brain I was resisting. My memory had been spotty since Mummy disappeared, by design, and I didn’t want to fix it, because memory equaled grief.

Not remembering was balm.”
― Prince Harry, Spare

“Grief is a thing best shared.”
― Prince Harry, Spare

“Maybe she was omnipresent for the very same reason that she was indescribable—because she was light, pure and radiant light, and how can you really describe light? Even Einstein struggled with that one.”
― Prince Harry, Spare

“Study, concentration, requires an alliance with the mind, and in my teen years I was waging all-out war with mine.”
― Prince Harry, Spare

“Being royal, it turned out, wasn’t all that far from being onstage. Acting was acting, no matter the context.”
― Prince Harry, Spare

“No one had an answer for a boy actually seeking external pain to match his internal.”
― Prince Harry, Spare

“I remember the mounds of flowers all around us. I remember feeling unspeakable sorrow and yet being unfailingly polite. I remember old ladies saying: Oh, my, how polite, the poor boy! I remember muttering thanks, over and over, thank you for coming, thank you for saying that, thank you for camping out here for several days. I remember consoling several folks who were prostrate, overcome, as if they knew Mummy, but also thinking: You didn’t, though. You act as if you did…but you didn’t know her.”
― Prince Harry, Spare

“Never complain, never explain.”
― Prince Harry, Spare