Heidi > Heidi's Quotes

“Smile, breathe and go slowly.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“Friends see most of each other’s flaws. Spouses see every awful last bit.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“The last generation's worst fears became the next one's B-grade entertainment.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“A certain feeling comes from throwing your good life away, and it is one part rapture.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“Cub had puffed up like a rooster when the article came out, taking it in to show the guys at the gravel company. He was impressed with all the celebrity in equal measure, the type of kid who had cut out pictures of football players, Jesus, and America's Most Wanted to tape on his bedroom wall. He'd confessed to having cried in sixth grade when he learned that superheroes weren't real. Dellarobia was his Wonder Woman. But Hester seemed incensed by the article, which referred to Dellarobia as Our Lady of the Butterflies. Among other complaints, Hester said it made them sound Catholic.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“But being a stay-at-home mom was the loneliest kind of lonely, in which she was always and never by herself.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“Honk if you love Jesus, text while driving if you want to meet up.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“But the pill did nothing, probably expired like everything else on the premises.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“Be sweet and carry a sharp knife, was her motto.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“As long as we won't commit to knowing everything, the presumption is we know nothing...he did not claim that God moves in mysterious ways. Instead he seemed to believe, as she did, though they never could have discussed it, that everything else is in motion while God does not move at all. God sits still, perfectly at rest, the silver dollar at the bottom of the well, the question.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“Entomologist Dr. Ovid Byron speaking to television journalist, Tina, who says, re: global warming, "Scientists of course are in disagreement about whether this is happening and whether humans have a role."
He replies:
"The Arctic is genuinely collapsing. Scientists used to call these things the canary in the mine. What they say now is, The canary is dead. We are at the top of Niagara Falls, Tina, in a canoe. There is an image for your viewers. We got here by drifting, but we cannot turn around for a lazy paddle back when you finally stop pissing around. We have arrived at the point of an audible roar. Does it strike you as a good time to debate the existence of the falls?”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“And fairly enough she thought, for that was the way of the world. A road was to be driven upon. The candy dish was there to be eaten, money in the bank got spent, people claimed whatever they could get their hands on. Wasn't that more or less automatic? For a human being to do any less seemed impossible.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“Words were not just words, describing things a person could see. Even if most did not. Maybe they had to know a thing first, to see it.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“There are always more questions. Science as a process is never complete. It is not a foot race, with a finish line.... People will always be waiting at a particular finish line: journalists with their cameras, impatient crowds eager to call the race, astounded to see the scientists approach, pass the mark, and keep running. It's a common misunderstanding, he said. They conclude there was no race. As long as we won't commit to knowing everything, the presumption is we know nothing.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“But luck is just throwing dice.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“In a lifetime of hearing people celebrate weekends, she finally saw what all the fuss was about. By no means did her workload cease on Saturday, but it did shift gears. If her kids wanted to pull everything out of the laundry basket to make a bird's nest and sit in it, fine. Dellarobia could even sit in there with them and incubate, if she so desired. Household chores no longer called her name exclusively. She had an income. She'd never before understood how much her life in this little house had felt to her like confinement in a sinking vehicle after driving off a bridge. ..... To open a hatch and swim away felt miraculous. Working outside the home took her about fifty yards from her kitchen, which was far enough. She couldn't see the dishes in the sink.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“Now, see, that's why you want Internet friends. You can find people just exactly like you. Screw your neighbors and your family, too messy...the trouble is, once you filter out everybody that doesn't agree with you, all that's left is maybe this one retired surfer guy living in Idaho.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“For scientists, reality is not optional.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“They all attended Hester's church, which Dellarobia viewed as a complicated pyramid scheme of moral debt and credit resting ultimately on the shoulders of the Lord, but rife with middle managers.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“Science doesn't tell us what we should do. It only tells us what is.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“Mistakes wreck your life. But they make what you have. It's kind of all one. You know what Hester told me when we were working the sheep one time? She said it's no good to complain about your flock, because it's the put-together of all your past choices.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“...whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. And peace will be with you.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“Some of life's greatest calls were answered not by the head but by the body.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“In almost thirty years of walking around on the grass of the world, she couldn't recall having spent two minutes alone with a butterfly.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“For the first time in her life she could see perfectly well how a person arrived on that flight path: needing an alternative to the present so badly, the only doorway was a high window.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“Will you explain to me why people encourage delusional behaviour in children, and medicate it in adults?”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“Having children was not like people said. Forget training them in your footsteps; the minute they put down the teething ring and found the Internet, you were useless as a source of anything but shoes and a winter coat.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior

“People automatically estimate a mom's IQ at around her children's ages, maybe dividing by the number of kids, rounding up to the nearest pajama size.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior