Emily > Emily'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

“Sleep is like a cat: It only comes to you if you ignore it.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“I feel myself trying to be charming, and then I realize I’m obviously trying to be charming, and then I try to be even more charming to make up for the fake charm, and then I’ve basically turned into Liza Minnelli: I’m dancing in tights and sequins, begging you to love me. There’s a bowler and jazz hands and lots of teeth.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“There's no app for a bourbon buzz on a warm day in a cool, dark bar. The world will always want a drink.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“It is a do-it-yourself era: health care, real estate, police investigation. Go online and f*ing figure it out for yourself because everyone’s overworked and understaffed.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“What God asks of men, said [Billy] Graham, is faith. His invisibility is the truest test of that faith. To know who sees him, God makes himself unseen.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“Though all three men faced the same hardship, their differing perceptions of it appeared to be shaping their fates. Louie and Phil's hope displaced their fear and inspired them to work toward their survival, and each success renewed their physical and emotional vigor. Mac's resignation seemed to paralyze him and the less he participated in their efforts to survive, the more he slipped. Though he did the least, as the days passed, it was he who faded the most. Louie and Phil's optimism, and Mac's hopelessness, were becoming self-fulfilling.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“Louie found the raft offered an unlikely intellectual refuge. He had never recognized how noisy the civilized world was. Here, drifting in almost total silence, with no scents other than the singed odor of the raft, no flavors on his tongue, nothing moving but the slow porcession of shark fins, every vista empty save water and sky, his time unvaried and unbroken, his mind was freed of an encumbrance that civilization had imposed on it. In his head, he could roam anywhere, and he found that his mind was quick and clear, his imagination unfettered and supple. He could stay with a thought for hours, turning it about.”
― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”
― Lois Lowry, The Giver

“I liked the feeling of love,' [Jonas] confessed. He glanced nervously at the speaker on the wall, reassuring himself that no one was listening. 'I wish we still had that,' he whispered. 'Of course,' he added quickly, 'I do understand that it wouldn't work very well. And that it's much better to be organized the way we are now. I can see that it was a dangerous way to live.'

...'Still,' he said slowly, almost to himself, 'I did like the light they made. And the warmth.”
― Lois Lowry, The Giver

“Of course they needed to care. It was the meaning of everything.”
― Lois Lowry, The Giver

“It's the choosing that's important, isn't it?”
― Lois Lowry, The Giver

“I feel sorry for anyone who is in a place where he feels strange and stupid.”
― Lois Lowry, The Giver

“The universe, I'd learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“The thing about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the thing that was so profound to me that summer—and yet also, like most things, so very simple—was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do. How there was no escape or denial. No numbing it down with a martini or covering it up with a roll in the hay. As I clung to the chaparral that day, attempting to patch up my bleeding finger, terrified by every sound that the bull was coming back, I considered my options. There were only two and they were essentially the same. I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“I’m a free spirit who never had the balls to be free.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Don’t you want to be alive before you die?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“What do we call visible light? We call it color. But the electromagnetic spectrum runs to zero in one direction and infinity in the other, so really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Like my grandmother always said, “Your opinions are valid and important. Unless it’s some stupid bullshit you’re being shitty about, in which case you can just go fuck yourself.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“Don’t sabotage yourself. There are plenty of other people willing to do that for free.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“Don’t make the same mistakes that everyone else makes. Make wonderful mistakes. Make the kind of mistakes that make people so shocked that they have no other choice but to be a little impressed.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“Depression is like … when you don’t want cheese anymore. Even though it’s cheese.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“There will be moments when you have to be a grown-up. Those moments are tricks. Do not fall for them.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“I AM GOING TO BE FURIOUSLY HAPPY, OUT OF SHEER SPITE.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“I can’t think of another type of illness where the sufferer is made to feel guilty and question their self-care when their medications need to be changed.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

“Pretend you’re good at it.”
― Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things