Bean > Bean's Quotes

“Do you remember,” he said, “when we first met and I told you I was ninety percent sure putting a rune on you wouldn’t kill you—and you slapped me in the face and told me it was for the other ten percent?” Clary nodded.
“I always figured a demon would kill me,” he said. “A rogue Downworlder. A battle. But I realized then that I just might die if I didn’t get to kiss you, and soon.” Clary licked her dry lips. “Well, you did,” she said. “Kiss me, I mean.”
He reached up and took a curl of her hair between his fingers. He was close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body, smell his soap and skin and hair.
“Not enough,” he said, letting her hair slip through his fingers. “If I kiss you all day every day for the rest of my life, it won’t be enough.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Lost Souls

“We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.”
― Veronica Roth, Divergent

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
― Rosemarie Urquico

“That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“In my experience, boys are predictable. As soon as they think of something, they do it. Girls are smarter—they plan ahead. They think about not getting caught.”
― Eoin Colfer, Half Moon Investigations

“She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city”
― Roman Payne, The Wanderess

“In my experience, when a woman's cruelty is combined with love and devotion, it is almost always without exception an act performed not out of treachery, but as a painful self-sacrifice for the good of her beloved, to obtain for him a future bounty where he would not know how to obtain it for himself, or have the courage, patience, or foresight to obtain it. Womankind always seems to be able to see a dozen steps into the future, far ahead of what men are able to see. And they have strength where we do not.”
― Roman Payne, The Wanderess

“She was a free bird one minute: queen of the world and laughing. The next minute she would be in tears like a porcelain angel, about to teeter, fall and break. She never cried because she was afraid that something 'would' happen; she would cry because she feared something that could render the world more beautiful, 'would not' happen.”
― Roman Payne, The Wanderess

“I was an adventurer, but she was not an adventuress. She was a 'wanderess.' Thus, she didn’t care about money, only experiences - whether they came from wealth or from poverty, it was all the same to her.”
― Roman Payne, The Wanderess

“A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a tree, one is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can wander.”
― Roman Payne, The Wanderess

“She seems so cool, so focused, so quiet, yet her eyes remain fixed upon the horizon. You think you know all there is to know about her immediately upon meeting her, but everything you think you know is wrong. Passion flows through her like a river of blood.

She only looked away for a moment, and the mask slipped, and you fell. All your tomorrows start here.”
― Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders

“What girls do to each other is beyond description. No Chinese torture comes close.”
― Tori Amos, Tori Amos: Piece by Piece

“You must give everything to make your life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in your imagination.”
― Roman Payne

“We girls, we're tough, darling. Soft on the outside but, deep down, we're tough.”
― Kristen Ashley, The Gamble

“This should tell you everything you need to know about guys. They only go after what they know they can get. We girls, on the other hand, aim really high. We take a leap...”
― Adriana Trigiani, Viola in Reel Life

“Someday, my young friend, you'll find out that girls are actually people too. Just like you and me.”
― Heather Brewer, First Kill

“Joss's ears perked up. He loved libraries. Nowhere else in the world felt so safe and homey. Nowhere else smelled like books and dust and happy solitude quite like a library did.”
― Heather Brewer, First Kill

“A crease found it's way onto Joss's forehead. Because he was certain that Sirus was wrong. Girls were more complicated than boys. Girls communicated in a language that only they understood. And Joss wasn't sure at all that he would ever understand them.”
― Heather Brewer, First Kill

“If it were customary to send little girls to school and teach them the same subjects as are taught to boys, they would learn just as fully and would understand the subtleties of all arts and sciences.”
― Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies

“I’m not used to girls, or familiar with their customs. I feel awkward around them, I don’t know what to say. I know the unspoken rules of boys, but with girls I sense that I am always on the verge of some unforeseen, calamitous blunder.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

“Everything is about them, not the dying boys and girls in the arena.”
― Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

“Man may have discovered fire, but women discovered how to play with it.”
― Candace Bushnell, Sex and the City

“If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Man is the cruelest animal.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings -- always darker, emptier and simpler.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood.”
― Friedrich Neitzsche