Hannah > Hannah's Quotes

“Everyone deserves a happy ending.”
― Jodi Picoult, Between the Lines

“The act of reading is a partnership. The author builds a house, but the reader makes it a home.”
― Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer, Between the Lines

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“He’s not your typical prince, more like a square peg in a round hole, kind of like me. He’s the sort of guy who wouldn’t mind reading side by side on a date.”
― Jodi Picoult, Between the Lines

“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

“I am always surprised to discover that when the world seems darkest, there exists the greatest opportunity for light.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, A Curse So Dark and Lonely

“We all push sometimes, just to make sure someone is on the other side, pushing back.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, More Than We Can Tell

“Panic attacks are a lot like being drunk in some ways, you lose self-control. You cry for seemingly no reason. You deal with the hangover long into the next day.”
― Sara Barnard, A Quiet Kind of Thunder

“We are all dealt a hand at birth. A good hand can ultimately lose - just as a poor hand can win - but we must all play the cards the fate deals. The choices we face may not be the choices we want, but they are choices nonetheless.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, A Curse So Dark and Lonely

“You want to know what I believe? I believe in fate, but I also believe in free will. Meaning, there's a path, but we're free to veer away from it. The only problem is that there's no way to know whose path we're following on any given moment. Our own? Our fate's? Other people are on their on paths, too. What happens when we intersect? What happens when someone else wipes our path clean, and we're left with no road to follow? Is that fate? Is that when free will kicks in? Is the path there, but invisible?
Who the hell knows?”
― Brigid Kemmerer, Letters to the Lost

“Loneliness is a funny disease. You don’t realize how badly you’re infected until someone gives you a shot of contentment—and then it wears off”
― Brigid Kemmerer, Thicker Than Water

“I like you.”

“I like you, too.”

“I’ve liked you since the morning you ran into me.”

I giggle and try to shove him away, but he uses the motion to pull us closer. “You have not,” I say.

“I have,” he whispers, and now his lips brush against my cheek. “I remember thinking, ‘Nice job, dickhead. Add another girl to the list of people who hate you.’”

“I don’t hate you. I’ve never hated you.”

“Now, that’s reassuring,” he says, but I can hear the smile in his voice. He inhales along my cheekbone, and sparks flare through my abdomen. “You should write for Hallmark.”

“All my future love letters will start with ‘To whom it may concern.’”

“Are you going to send me future love letters?”

I flush, and I’m sure he can see it. Feel it.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, Letters to the Lost

“No one lives in a vacuum. Our actions have an impact on everyone around us. Sometimes without us even realizing it.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, More Than We Can Tell

“Thank you.” “For what?” “For seeing me.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, More Than We Can Tell

“Sometimes I think people are so used to negativity that a positive atmosphere is uncomfortable, or even frightening. It goes along with what we were talking about. When you can't trust anyone, the unknown is a very frightening place indeed.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, More Than We Can Tell

“Ah yes, the most dangerous person at the party is always the girl sitting alone with a book.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, A Heart So Fierce and Broken

“Look to the stars. Aim. Ignite.”
― Ashley Poston, Geekerella

“You may think you’re doing the Lord’s work, but you’re really just using the church to be judgmental and nasty. Religion deserves better than you.”
― Jen Doll, Unclaimed Baggage

“I believe about God, but I definitely don’t think it’s right how some people around here use him to justify acting like small-minded bigots.”
― Jen Doll, Unclaimed Baggage

“What I wish I could do now is go back in time and shout this: Why don’t boys get blamed or held accountable when they put their hands on girls’ bodies? Why are girls the ones who have to look or act a certain way so they don’t “entice” the boys? Aren’t boys capable of doing the right thing, even if a girl is wearing a swimsuit, or leggings, or a crop top … even RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM? And if they’re not, why do we let those boys out of the house?”
― Jen Doll, Unclaimed Baggage

“You know, people come to Italy for all sorts of reasons, but when they stay, it's for the same two things."
"What?"
"Love and gelato.”
― Jenna Evans Welch, Love & Gelato

“Turns out there's a reason they call it falling in love, because when it happens - really happens - that's exactly how it feels. There's no doing or trying, you just let go and hope that someone's going to be there to catch you.”
― Jenna Evans Welch, Love & Gelato

“Never give up on your dreams, and never let anyone tell you that what you love is inconsequential or useless or a waste of time. Because if you love it? If that OTP or children's card game or abridged series or YA book or animated series makes you happy?
That is never a waste of time. Because in the end we're all just a bunch of weirdos standing in front of other weirdos, asking for their username.”
― Ashley Poston, Geekerella

“I'm half of my father. Half of my hero. And I am half of my mother. Half soft sighs and half sharp edges. And if they can be Carmindor and Amara--then somewhere in my blood and bones I can be too. I'm the lost princess. I'm the villain of my story, and the hero. Part of my mom and part of my dad. I am a fact of the universe. The Possible and the Impossible. I am not no one. I am my parents' daughter, and then I realize--I realize that in this universe they're alive too. They're alive through me. Fashioning my hands into a pistol, I point it at the ceiling, lifting my chin, raising my eyes against the blinding stage lights, and I ignite the stars.”
― Ashley Poston, Geekerella

“You'd rather make up a fantasy version of somebody in your head than be with a real person.”
― Jenny Han, To All the Boys I've Loved Before

“would”
― Sandhya Menon, Of Curses and Kisses

“Dear Kiran, I AM SorRy mY faMILy siTUAtion haS Been sO HarD on You. WHAT Can I DO to MaKe It BetTer? YoU Are The GUY, so CleArLY You KnOw BeST.”
― Sandhya Menon, Of Curses and Kisses

“Kiran was one of those guys who thought Jaya’s X chromosome stood for “xplain things to me.”
― Sandhya Menon, Of Curses and Kisses

“I've never considered any book, especially a novel or work of literature, something you should 'plow through.' The whole point of reading is savor ing the story, immersing your self in a whole new place. Maybe one that doesn't even exist.”
― Laura Taylor Namey, The Library of Lost Things

“It was the small time between sunset and evening when the sky turned the color of crushed plums, bruised from the wounds of another day.”
― Laura Taylor Namey, The Library of Lost Things