Allison > Allison's Quotes

“She could not explain or quite understand that it wasn't altogether jealousy she felt, it was rage. And not because she couldn't shop like that or dress like that. It was because that was what girls were supposed to be like. That was what men - people, everybody - thought they should be like. Beautiful, treasured, spoiled, selfish, pea-brained. That was what a girl should be, to be fallen in love with. Then she would become a mother and she'd be all mushily devoted to her babies. Not selfish anymore, but just as pea-brained. Forever.”
― Alice Munro, Runaway: Stories

“Lila Bard lived by a simple rule: if a thing was worth having, it was worth taking.”
― V.E. Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic

“I disapprove of matrimony as a matter of principle.... Why should any independent, intelligent female choose to subject herself to the whims and tyrannies of a husband? I assure you, I have yet to meet a man as sensible as myself! (Amelia Peabody)”
― Elizabeth Peters, Crocodile on the Sandbank

“Or maybe a person is just made up of a lot of people,” I say. “Maybe we’re accumulating these new selves all the time.” Hauling them in as we make choices, good and bad, as we screw up, step up, lose our minds, find our minds, fall apart, fall in love, as we grieve, grow, retreat from the world, dive into the world, as we make things, as we break things.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“There are some choices you can only make once. You can't go back to where you made a choice and then take the other one.”
― Mary Hoffman, City of Flowers

“People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss.”
― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“The way to get on with a cat is to treat it as an equal - or even better, as the superior it knows itself to be.”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog

“In the silence I heard Bastet, who had retreated under the bed, carrying on a mumbling, profane monologue. (If you ask how I knew it was profane, I presume you have never owned a cat.)”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Deeds of the Disturber

“Marriage, in my view, should be a balanced stalemate between equal adversaries.”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Mummy Case

“When one is striding bravely into the future one cannot watch one's footing. ”
― Elizabeth Peters

“Another dead body. Every year it is the same. Every year, another dead body...”
― Elizabeth Peters, Lion in the Valley

“It is much more sensible to be an optimist instead of a pessimist, for if one is doomed to disappointment, why experience it in advance?”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog

“Your trousers are on fire. I would have told you, but you so dislike advice...”
― Elizabeth Peters

“Peculiar or not, it is my idea of pleasure. Why, why else do you lead this life you don't enjoy it? Don't talk of duty to me; you men always have some high-sounding excuse for indulging yourselves. You go gallivanting over the earth, climbing mountains, looking for the sources of the Nile; and expect women to sit dully at home embroidering. I embroider very badly. I think I would excavate rather well. ”
― Elizabeth Peters, Crocodile on the Sandbank

“..he continues to cling to the forlorn hope that I will turn into one of those swooning females...and fling myself squeeling at him whenever anything happens. Like all men, he clings to his illusions.”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Last Camel Died at Noon

“There was no warning, not even a knock. The door flew open, and he forgot his present aches and pains in anticipation of what lay in store. The figure that stood in the door was not that of an enemy. It was worse. It was his mother.”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Ape Who Guards the Balance

“A lady cannot be blamed if a master criminal takes a fancy to her.”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Hippopotamus Pool

“If you don't imagine, nothing ever happens at all.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“Human reason can excuse any evil; that is why it's so important that we don't rely on it.”
― Veronica Roth , Divergent

“People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts. You will never know them, but sometimes you decide to trust them.”
― Veronica Roth, Insurgent

“Knowledge is power. Power to do evil...or power to do good. Power itself is not evil. So knowledge itself is not evil.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“You don’t believe things because they make your life better, you believe them because they’re true.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“You have to see the miracles for there to be miracles.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“People die, I think, but your relationship with them doesn't. It continues and is ever-changing.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“Meeting your soul mate is like walking into a house you’ve been in before—you will recognize the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves, the contents of drawers: You could find your way around in the dark if you had to”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“When I think about it . . . I guess I’ve just taken what bits and pieces I felt were right for me and made my own faith with them. Faith is a very personal thing, really. Just because you don’t meet with a group of people once a week who believe everything exactly the way you do doesn’t mean you don’t believe in something.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, The Paper Magician

“The idea that two is the ideal, and that one is only good as half of two. You are not a half, and you should never treat someone else like a half.”
― David Levithan, Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story

“You’re a candle that won’t be snuffed, and now the darkest parts of this world can see you. And they don’t tolerate the light.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, The Glass Magician