fulano > fulano's Quotes

“..., my pa and ma tell me how hard they've worked so I could have a comfortable life, how long it took to establish their firm and make it flourish, how it's my duty to earn well so I can look after them in their old age and my duty to look after their legacy that I'll inherit.”
― Padma Venkatraman, A Time to Dance

“Do not stare at me unless you are willing to see me.' ...'Look at me,” he says. “Look at this body. My body. Or stop looking. Deny it, and deny me.”
― Anna-Marie McLemore, Dark and Deepest Red

“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“So the fairy silver brought you a monster of fire for a husband, and me a monster of ice. We should put them in a room together and let them make us both widows.”
― Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver

“And on the wedding contract, before me and my parents and the rabbi, and Wanda and Sergey for our witnesses, in silver ink he signed his name.

But I won't ever tell you what it is.”
― Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver

“I never thought of it like that. I always thought of you as a part of me, like my own eyes or my own hands. You don't go around thinking 'I love my eyes, I love my hands', do you? But think what it would be like to live without your eyes or your hands. To be mad, or to be blind. I can't talk about it. It's how I feel.”
― Elizabeth Marie Pope, The Perilous Gard

“I am not your subject or your servant, and if you want a cowering mouse for a wife, go find someone else who can turn silver to gold for you.”
― Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver

“A gentleman can hardly continue to sit,' he explained, in his serenest and most level voice, 'when he asks a very remarkable young lady to do him the honor of marrying him. And - 'he somehow contrived to grin at me wickedly, 'I usually get what I want, Miss Grahame,' he added, and pitched over in a tangled heap on the floor.”
― Elizabeth Marie Pope, The Sherwood Ring: A Paranormal Romance About Colonial Ghosts, Spies, and Mystery for Children

“Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love.

It did not end well.”
― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone

“I can’t imagine all men love their women the way I love Anne. If they did, the streets would be empty, and the fields would grow fallow. Industry would rumble to a halt and markets would tumble as men bowed at the feet of their wives, unable to need or notice anything but her. If all men loved their wives the way I love Anne, we would be a useless lot. Or maybe the world would know peace. Maybe the wars would end, and the strife would cease as we centred our lives on loving and being loved.”
― Amy Harmon, What the Wind Knows

“But as it turns out, the criminals on the streets aren’t half as bad as the ones living in mansions.”
― Margaret Rogerson, Sorcery of Thorns

“The tsar was holding her hands against his chest, the ring on his finger gleaming pale silver like the tears running in silver lines down his cheeks; he was gazing down at her with eyes shining jewel-green, as though she were the most beautiful thing in the world.”
― Naomi Novik, Spinning Silver

“Yelena, you've driven me crazy. You've caused me considerable trouble and I've contemplated ending your life twice since I've known you." Valek's warm breath in my ear sent a shiver down my spine.

"But you’ve slipped under my skin, invaded my blood and seized my heart.”

“That sounds more like a poison than a person,” was all I could say. His confession had both shocked and thrilled me.

“Exactly,” Valek replied. “You have poisoned me.”
― Maria V. Snyder, Poison Study

“Oh, I will be cruel to you, Marya Morevna. It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be. But you understand, don’t you? You are clever enough. I am a demanding creature. I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable. But I am your servant. When you starve I will feed you; when you are sick I will tend you. I crawl at your feet; for before your love, your kisses, I am debased. For you alone I will be weak.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Koschei smiled. His pale lips sought hers, crushing her into a kiss like dying. She tasted sweetness there, as though he still kissed her with honey and sugar on his tongue. When he pulled away, his eyes shone.

"I don't care, Marya Morevna. Kiss him. Take him to your bed, and the vila, too, for all it matters to me. Do you understand me, wife? There need never be any rules between us. Let us be greedy together; let us hoard. Let us hit each other with birch branches and lock each other in dungeons; let us drink each other's blood in the night and betray each other in the sun. Let us lie and lust and take hundreds of lovers; let us dance until snow melts beneath us. Let us steal and eat until we grow fat and roll in the pleasures of life, clutching each other for purchase. Only leave me my death — let me hold this one thing sacred and unmolested and secret — and I will serve you a meal myself, served on a platter of all the world's bounty. Only do not leave me, swear that you will never leave me, and no empress will stand higher. Forget the girls in the factory. Be selfish and cruel and think nothing of them. I am selfish. I am cruel. My mate cannot be less than I. I will have you in my hoard, Marya Morevna, my black mirror.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“Do you know why my peers want their brides to have pale skin?.... They want a woman who is a canvas, white and empty. Standing still, existing for no other purpose than to serve as a mute object onto which they can paint their own hopes and desires. They want their brides veiled. They want a demure, blank space they can fill with whatever they desire.”
― Courtney Milan, Unveiled

“The way you look at me, do you mean it?”
― Anna-Marie McLemore, Blanca & Roja

“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“You unmanageable, contrary creature. You have made me believe in something at last. It feels as wretched as I imagined.”
― Margaret Rogerson, Sorcery of Thorns

“This is was what their mothers would say if she and her cousins ever told them the things they folded inside their hearts. Twice as many paths to trouble, their mothers would whisper. As though their daughters loving both men and women meant they wanted all of them in the world. There was no way to tell their mothers the truth and make them believe it, that hearts that loved both boys and girls were no more reckless or easily won than any other heart. They loved who they loved. They broke how they broke. And the way it happened depended less on what was under their lovers' clothes and more on what was wrapped inside their spirits.”
― Anna-Marie McLemore, Wild Beauty

“The story of the ugly duckling was never about the cygnet discovering he is lovely. It is not a story about realizing you have become beautiful.

It is about the sudden understanding that you are something other than what you thought you were, and that what you are is more beautiful than what you once thought you had to be.”
― Anna-Marie McLemore, Blanca & Roja

“It shouldn't have mattered, not when Miel and the other girls in his class wore jeans more than they wore skirts. Not when they told their brothers what to do, and borrowed their fathers' books.
But there was everything else. The idea of being called Miss or Ms. or worse, Mrs. The thought of being grouped in when someone called out 'girls' or 'ladies.' The endless, echoing use of 'she' and 'her,' 'miss' and 'ma'am.' Yes, they were words. They were all just words. But each of them was wrong, and they stuck to him. Each one was a golden fire ant, and they were biting his arms and his neck and his bound-flat chest, leaving him bleeding and burning.
'He.' 'Him.' 'Mister.' 'Sir.' Even teachers admonishing him and his classmates with 'boys, settle down' or 'gentlemen, please.' These were sounds as perfect and clean as winter rain, and they calmed each searing bite of those wrong words.”
― Anna-Marie McLemore, When the Moon Was Ours

“To the boys who get called girls,
the girls who get called boys,
and those who live outside these words.
To those called names,
and those searching for names of their own.
To those who live on the edges,
and in the spaces in between.
I wish for you every light in the sky.”
― Anna-Marie McLemore, When the Moon Was Ours

“My story was not a fairy tale of a cruel-hearted girl whose shoes danced her to death, or a kindhearted one who threw her red shoes into the river. This was not a story about a wicked queen made to wear iron heels, or a lovely, golden-haired girl in slippers of glass. This had been about a fever, a nightmare, a dance made into a curse.
It was about women turning their own fears into their sharpest blades.”
― Anna-Marie McLemore, Dark and Deepest Red

“I think we ought to live happily ever after.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle

“You must admit I have a right to live in a pigsty if I want.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle

“I was a girl who would never exist in a fairy tale, not just because of the brown of my body but because of my heart, neither pure enough to be good nor cruel enough to be evil. I was a girl lost in the deep, narrow space between the two forms girls were allowed to take.”
― Anna-Marie McLemore, Blanca & Roja

“Of course he would think the whole glittering universe existed to spin anything he wanted out of stardust. He was a man, and a rich one, and these together made him believe the planets and moons orbited around the single point of his desires.”
― Anna-Marie McLemore, Wild Beauty

“If a man has to say trust me it's a sure sign you cannot. Trust him, that is. Trust is a thing you do without words.”
― Juliet Marillier, Wildwood Dancing

“All the way up the river she's been holding back somehow, waiting. Now you'll both have to wait. I'm not going to disappoint her, Kit. When I take you on board the Witch, it's going to be for keeps.”
― Elizabeth George Speare, The Witch of Blackbird Pond