Taylor > Taylor's Quotes

“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

“There's a difference between really loving someone and loving the idea of her.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“Of all that we're asked to give others in this life, the most difficult to offer may be forgiveness.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“Our former selves are never dead. We speak to them, arguing against decisions we know will bring only unhappiness, offering consolation and hope, even though they cannot hear.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“The beauty isn’t in the jewel itself, but in the way the light shines through it.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“Open yourself to every possibility, for there is nothing your heart can imagine that is not so.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“Love comes in so many forms, and pain is no different.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“THERE IS A river that runs through time and the universe, vast and inexplicable, a flow of spirit that is at the heart of all existence, and every molecule of our being is a part of it. And what is God but the whole of that river?”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“Everything that’s been done to us we carry forever. Most of us do our damnedest to hold on to the good and forget the rest. But somewhere in the vault of our hearts, in a place our brains can’t or won’t touch, the worst is stored, and the only sure key to it is in our dreams.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“Ask me, God’s right here. In the dirt, the rain, the sky, the trees, the apples, the stars in the cottonwoods. In you and me, too. It’s all connected and it’s all God. Sure this is hard work, but it’s good work because it’s a part of what connects us to this land, Buck. This beautiful, tender land.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“It seems to me, Buck, that if you can find peace in your heart, God’s not far away.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“that people are most afraid of things they don’t understand, and if something frightened you, you should get closer to it. That didn’t mean it wouldn’t still be an awful thing, but the awful you knew was easier to handle than the awful you imagined.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“Perhaps the most important truth I’ve learned across the whole of my life is that it’s only when I yield to the river and embrace the journey that I find peace.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“In every sinner, Gertie, is the possibility of a saint.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“There is a deeper hurt than anything sustained by the body, and it's the wounding of the soul. It's the feeling that you've been abandoned by everyone, even God. It's the most alone you'll ever be. A wounded body heals itself, but there is a scar.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“When darkness comes over your soul, it doesn’t come in light shades; it descends with all the black of a moonless night.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“She gazed at me, and in her eyes I found what it was I’d been searching for all along, searching for without understanding. Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, heart of my heart.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“So, among the many pieces of wisdom life has offered me over all these years is this: Open yourself to every possibility, for there is nothing your heart can imagine that is not so.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“I’ve always thought of her in the way I think of a precious gem: The beauty isn’t in the jewel itself, but in the way the light shines through it.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“In every sinner is the possibility of a saint.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“what I know in my heart is a mystery beyond human comprehension. Perhaps the most important truth I’ve learned across the whole of my life is that it’s only when I yield to the river and embrace the journey that I find peace.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“I don’t know why a government would behave any differently from the people who comprise it,” Mother Beal said around the stem of her pipe. “When it comes to money, people often behave in ungracious and ungrateful ways.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“Me, I love this land, the work. Never was a churchgoer. God all penned up under a roof? I don’t think so. Ask me, God’s right here. In the dirt, the rain, the sky, the trees, the apples, the stars in the cottonwoods. In you and me, too. It’s all connected and it’s all God. Sure this is hard work, but it’s good work because it’s a part of what connects us to this land, Buck. This beautiful tender land.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“Which turned out to be a thing I couldn’t do. Not because imagination failed me, but because I was afraid to dream in that way. In my whole life, I could recall no dream ever coming true.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“They'd both learned that a memory is a fact that has been dyed and trimmed and rinsed so many times that it comes out looking almost unrecognizable to anyone else who was in that room or anyone who was standing on the grass beneath that telephone pole.”
― Mary Beth Keane, Ask Again, Yes

“And he’d figured out that the fun was often not the thing itself—the party, the keg stand, the naked running into the duck pond—but the endless talking about it after, the reliving and describing, and laughing about it in front of people who wished they’d been there. Used to be he was one of the kids listening, one of the kids who missed everything, but now, since college, since Kate, he was in the stories.”
― Mary Beth Keane, Ask Again, Yes

“Kate thought about their wedding day as a conclusion to something, where he thought about it as a beginning. Rising action versus falling action. They were reading different books.”
― Mary Beth Keane, Ask Again, Yes

“It wasn't that she didn't love him, he knew. It was that she loved him so much that it frightened her, loved him so much that she worried she might have to protect herself from it. He tried to let her know that he'd figured that out, finally, that there was no need to explain, but then he realized that she might not know it herself.”
― Mary Beth Keane, Ask Again, Yes

“She knew that if she asked him to stay, he would. He’d settle right in on the couch and stay the night, the whole week. He wouldn’t ask for a blanket. He wouldn’t ask for a shower. He’d stay exactly where she needed him to be until she told him it was okay to go. Just imagining him there made her feel easier, made her feel as if she’d been thrown a rope, made her feel as if the very room they were standing in was more solidly constructed. She wanted him to stay so badly that she had to sit down, turn away from him a little or else he’d know.”
― Mary Beth Keane, Ask Again, Yes