Emma > Emma's Quotes

“Broken people don't hide from their monsters. Broken people let themselves be eaten.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“There is a small monster in my brain that controls my doubt.
The doubt itself is a stupid thing, without sense or feeling, blind and straining at the end of a long chain. The monster though, is smart. It's always watching, and when I am cmpletely sure of myself, it unchains the doubt and lets it run wild. even when I know it's coming, I can't stop it.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“I'm so tired. I'm tired of anxiety that twists my stomach so hard I can't move the rest of my body. Tired of constant vigilance. Tired of wanting to do something about myself, but always taking easy way out.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“Like life, what gives a story its meaning is the fact that it ends. Our stories have lives of their own—and its up to us to make them mean something.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“Disappearing is an art form, and I am its queen.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“I made Monstrous Sea because it's the story I wanted. I wanted a story like it, and I couldn't find one, so I created it myself.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“Creating art is a lonely task, which is why we introverts revel in it, but when we have fans looming over us, it becomes loneliness of a different sort. We become cage animals watched by zoo-goers, expected to perform lest the crowd grow bored or angry. It's not always bad. Sometimes we do well, and the cage feels more like a pedestal”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“Real people don’t have concise character arcs.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“I do have friends. Maybe they live hundreds of miles away from me, and maybe I can only talk to them through a screen, but they're still my friends. They don't just hold Monstrous Sea together. They hold me together.
Max and Emmy are the reason any of this exists.”
― Francesca Zappia, Eliza and Her Monsters

“This letter, my very dear Eliza, will not be delivered to you unless I shall first have terminated my earthly career to begin, as I humbly hope from redeeming grace and divine mercy, a happy immortality. If it had been possible for me to have avoided the interview, my love for you and my precious children would have been alone a decisive motive. But it was not possible without sacrifices which would have rendered me unworthy of your esteem. I need not tell you of the pangs I feel from the idea of quitting you and exposing you to the anguish which I know you would feel. Nor could I dwell on the topic lest it should unman me. The consolations of religion, my beloved, can alone support you and these you have a right to enjoy. Fly to the bosom of your God and be comforted. With my last idea, I shall cherish the sweet hope of meeting you in a better world. Adieu best of wives and best of women. Embrace all my darling children for me. Ever yours A H72”
― Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton

“The promise of liberty is not written in blood or engraved in stone, it's embroidered into the fabric of our nation.”
― Laura Kamoie, My Dear Hamilton

“The decades that she devoted to conserving her husband’s legacy made Eliza only more militantly loyal to his memory, and there was one injury she could never forget: the exposure of the Maria Reynolds affair, for which she squarely blamed James Monroe. In the 1820s, after Monroe had completed two terms as president, he called upon Eliza in Washington, D.C., hoping to thaw the frost between them. Eliza was then about seventy and staying at her daughter’s home. She was sitting in the backyard with her fifteen-year-old nephew when a maid emerged and presented the ex-president’s card. Far from being flattered by this distinguished visitor, Eliza was taken aback. “She read the name and stood holding the card, much perturbed,” said her nephew. “Her voice sank and she spoke very low, as she always did when she was angry. ‘What has that man come to see me for?’” The nephew said that Monroe must have stopped by to pay his respects. She wavered. “I will see him,” she finally agreed. So the small woman with the upright carriage and the sturdy, determined step marched stiffly into the house. When she entered the parlor, Monroe rose to greet her. Eliza then did something out of character and socially unthinkable: she stood facing the ex-president but did not invite him to sit down. With a bow, Monroe began what sounded like a well-rehearsed speech, stating “that it was many years since they had met, that the lapse of time brought its softening influences, that they both were nearing the grave, when past differences could be forgiven and forgotten.” Eliza saw that Monroe was trying to draw a moral equation between them and apportion blame equally for the long rupture in their relationship. Even at this late date, thirty years after the fact, she was not in a forgiving mood. “Mr. Monroe,” she told him, “if you have come to tell me that you repent, that you are sorry, very sorry, for the misrepresentations and the slanders and the stories you circulated against my dear husband, if you have come to say this, I understand it. But otherwise, no lapse of time, no nearness to the grave, makes any difference.” Monroe took in this rebuke without comment. Stunned by the fiery words delivered by the elderly little woman in widow’s weeds, the ex-president picked up his hat, bid Eliza good day, and left the house, never to return.”
― Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton

“The opposite of love, I thought, was not hatred, but indifference, and for my own survival, I’d made my heart indifferent to Alexander Hamilton.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton

“I never was a beauty. It was only that, until a few days ago, Alexander had made me feel like one.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton

“But I think it better, in times like these, for us to acknowledge that marriage is a choice, one made, every day, anew.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton

“Angelica had been right. Love was a thing beyond reason, beyond control. A thing almost predestined. And now that this powerful emotion had finally taken hold of me, I was entirely helpless against it.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton

“Silence is often the only weapon available to ladies. And I wield mine expertly.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton

“I was someone before I met Alexander Hamilton.
Not someone famous or important or with a learned philosophical understanding of all that was at stake in our revolution. Not a warrior or a philosopher or statesman.
But I was a patriot.
I was no unformed skein of wool for Hamilton to weave together into any tapestry he wished. That's important for me to remember now, when every thread of my life has become tangled with everything he was. Important, I think, in sorting out what can be forgiven, to remember my own experiences - the ones filled with my own yearnings that had nothing to do with him.
I was, long before he came into my life, a young woman struggling to understand her place in a changing world. And torn, even then, between loyalty, duty, and honor in the face of betrayal.”
― Stephanie Dray, My Dear Hamilton: A Novel of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton

“I was someone before I met Alexander Hamilton" ~ Betsy Schuyler”
― Laura Kamoie, My Dear Hamilton

“Music makes everything more romantic, doesn't it? One second you're walking your dog in the suburbs, and then you put on Adele, and it's like you're in a movie and you've just had your heart brutally broken.”
― Jenny Han, Always and Forever, Lara Jean

“I’m a person who saves things. I’ll hold on forever. *”
― Jenny Han, Always and Forever, Lara Jean

“Actually, judging by Pinterest alone, I’m pretty sure a lot of people would look forward to hanging out in such a beautiful library.”
― Jenny Han, Always and Forever, Lara Jean

“Nothing good happens after two a.m. Unless you happen to be a fan of watching people play flip cup for hours on end. Not me. No, I’d much prefer to be in my flannel pajamas with a cup of Night-Night tea and a book, thank you very much.”
― Jenny Han, Always and Forever, Lara Jean

“It doesn't work like that. You don't just pick your song. The song picks you. Like the Sorting Hat.”
― Jenny Han, Always and Forever, Lara Jean

“I wish we could see Hamilton.”
― Jenny Han, Always and Forever, Lara Jean

“She always picked love; she always picked adventure. To her, they were one and the same.”
― Jenny Han, Always and Forever, Lara Jean

“The first sixth-grade assembly.”
I look up at him. “Huh?”
“That’s the first time I saw you. You were sitting in the row in the front of me. I thought you were cute.”
I laugh. “Nice try.” It’s so endearingly Peter to make up stuff to try and sound romantic.
He keeps going. “Your hair was really long and you had a headband with a bow. I always liked your hair, even back then.”
“Okay, Peter,” I say, reaching up and patting him on his cheek.
He ignores me. “Your backpack had your name written on it in glitter letters. I’d never heard of the name Lara Jean before.”
My mouth falls open. I hot-glued those glitter letters to my backpack myself! It took me forever trying to get them straight enough. I’d forgotten all about that backpack. It was my prized possession.
“The principal started picking random people to come on stage and play a game for prizes. Everybody was raising their hands, but your hair got caught in your chair and you were trying to untangle it, so you didn’t get picked. I remember thinking maybe I should help you, but then I thought that would be weird.”
“How do you remember all that?” I ask in amazement.
Smiling, he shrugs. “I don’t know. I just do.”
Kitty’s always saying how origin stories are important.
At college, when people ask us how we met, how will we answer them? The shorty story is, we grew up together. But that’s more Josh’s and my story. High school sweethearts? That’s Peter and Gen’s story. So what’s ours, then?
I suppose I’ll say it all started with a love letter.”
― Jenny Han, Always and Forever, Lara Jean

“One second you’re walking your dog in the suburbs, and then you put on Adele, and it’s like you’re in a movie and you’ve just had your heart brutally broken.” Margot”
― Jenny Han, Always and Forever, Lara Jean

“In truth, if Kitty's anyone, she's a Jefferson. Wily, stylish, quick with a comeback. Margot's an Angelica, no question. She's been sailing her own ship since she was a little girl. She's always known who she was and what she wanted. I suppose I'm an Eliza, though I'd much rather be an Angelica. In truth I'm probably And Peggy. But I don't want to be the And Peggy of my own story. I want to be the Hamilton.”
― Jenny Han, Always and Forever, Lara Jean

“I prefer to be left alone with my books.”
― Alison Weir, Innocent Traitor