Main Character Quotes

“I'll tell you a secret about storytelling. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty... were not perfect in the beginning. It's only a happy ending on the last page, right? If the princess had everything from the beginning, there wouldn't be a story. Anyone who is imperfect or incomplete can become the main character in the story.”
― PEACH－PIT, Shugo Chara!, Vol. 2: Friends in Need

“I exist dad! I wake up every morning and I exist. Because you made me. I didn’t ask to be here, in this world, in this house, but you guys made me and I’m here and I exist, even though you pretend I don’t. And you know what? It really hurts. It hurts that you treat me like nothing and treat Adam like everything. It hurts how we’re all scared of you. Literally everything about you hurts me, and you don’t even care that it hurts.”
”
― Holly Bourne, The Yearbook

“He felt like a character in a book. He thought of Mary Lennox as she discovered her secret garden.
The blackberry bushes had become too thick to ride through and Percy dismounted, leaving Prince beneath the shade of a thick-trunked oak tree. He chose a strong whip of wood and started carving his way through the knotted vines. He was no longer a boy whose legs didn't always do as he wished; he was Sir Gawain on the lookout for the Green Knight, Lord Byron on his way to fight a duel, Beowulf leading an army upon Grendel. So keen was his focus on his swordplay that he didn't realize at first that he'd emerged from the forested area and was standing now on what must have been the top of a gravel driveway.
Looming above him was not so much a house as a castle. Two enormous floors, with mammoth rectangular windows along each face and an elaborate stone balustrade of Corinthian columns running around all four sides of its flat roof. He thought at once of Pemberley, and half expected to see Mr. Darcy come striding through the big double doors, riding crop tucked beneath his arm as he jogged down the stone steps that widened in an elegant sweep as they reached the turning circle where he stood.”
― Kate Morton, Homecoming

“He finally returned my gaze, and held it. A knot lodged in my throat, because he was closer than I expected, and his eyelashes were darker than I expected, and long, and there was a gray rim around the inside of his irises that looked like crowns of storm clouds surrounding a peridot. His gaze made the butterflies in my stomach shake off their hibernation and want to remember how to flutter again.
Oh yes, he had to be the main character.
Book boyfriend material, once someone fixed him up.
But then: Where was his heroine?”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“I really am hungry."
I leaned down to whisper in her ear. "I'm hungry for something too."
She turned an adorable shade of red and tried to scoot away from me, which wasn't going to happen since I had put my arm around her waist and there was no way she could break my hold.
That's when we heard the most unexpected sound. Laughter.
I looked up to see the fae in the end booth laughing. She had scooted her book aside and was trying to cover her mouth, but she was laughing.
"I'm sorry," she giggled, wiping at the tears in the corner of her eye. "I didn't mean to spy on you guys, but whatever he just did to you reminds me of my mate."
She burst into giggles again and her laughter bubbled loudly enough to draw the fae from the kitchen.
"Thea, what happened?" The kitchen fae opened the door.
"No, nothing. That big one just did something to the witch and it reminded me of Devin.”
― Sabrina Blackburry, Dirty Lying Dragons

“And I take it the distraction from before was at your location, Lady Thea?" Ryker kneeled down next to me, putting an arm around my shoulders.
The Lady of Winter tightened her hold on the little girl. "It was, but we stopped it."
"There was a loud boom," Ryker prodded for details.
Thea's mouth was a grim line. "There was. It seems someone... someone came into her powers unexpectedly. The threat was handled." Her eyes fell to the child cuddled under her chin, shivering in a pink nightgown, not from the chill but from the trauma of the night. We all stared, and the girl peeked around her little shoulder long enough to show me the flash of blue eyes to match Thea's under the mop of dark hair that matched Devin's.”
― Sabrina Blackburry, Dirty Lying Dragons

“If the windmill should prove too formidable, I may see what can be done with the wind.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche

“Tom Argent had once loved fairy tales. When he was very young, he had loved to read about princes, and kings, and queens, and fairies, and goblins, and magic. He even liked to pretend that he was the son of a fairy queen, or a pirate king, who had been adopted by humans, and one day would claim his kingdom.
His parents had grown concerned at this. They had never hidden the fact that Tom was adopted, and they knew that all children liked to pretend. But Tom's imagination was especially vivid. He loved his parents very much, but they were afraid that this daydreaming might lead him to reject them one day. And so, they had both gone out of their way to discourage his love of fairy tales.
Whenever they saw him with his books, they would tell him: 'Stories aren't real. Magic is just an illusion. Fairies don't exist, Tom. Only trust what you can see.'
Then, on his seventh birthday, they had given Tom a camera, and the books of fairy tales had vanished swiftly and silently overnight, to be replaced by magazines devoted to different types of lens, in which the young Tom Argent had found another kind of magic. But looking at these images of the mysterious girl, he felt as if he had returned to the world of those long-ago storybooks, and it felt both exciting and wonderful, and deeply, darkly dangerous.”
― Joanne Harris, The Moonlight Market

“it was such a lovely night. The moon was round and large, framed perfectly between the buildings like the main character in her own film, reflecting off the windows, cascading silvery light into the warm orange of the streetlights.”
― Ashley Poston, The Seven Year Slip

“Life wasn't like TV, and she had definitely not been whisked away to her Happily Ever After. No one could do that, she realized. Not even an ancient, hidden race of people with powers like lions who gathered in prides.
There were no real superheroes.”
― Liz Braswell, The Nine Lives of Chloe King

“You have a good heart, Zoey."
Zoey smiled. "Thanks."
"A weird fascination with this family, but a good heart.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Other Birds: A Novel

“Out marched a woman carrying a plate. I didn't see what was on the plate at first, because I knew this woman. She was short and dark-haired, with rosy cheeks and shiny gold Converses that sparkled beneath the ceiling lights. I'd seen her wearing those same gold Converses on TV.
My brain short-circuited a little as she kept on marching toward our table, and I saw what she was holding on her plate. It was some sort of twisted pastry with cherries and chocolate sauce forming... hearts all over the plate. And just one dainty fork.
Oh. Oh no.
She set the plate on our table with a wide smile. "I hear it's a special day for you, and I wanted to bring you this babka beignet on the house. Happy anniversary!"
Oh my god. I couldn't believe I had to lie to Chef Sadie Rosen.”
― Amanda Elliot, Best Served Hot

“But Tom was no believer in fairy tales and miracles. He could walk through a bluebell wood and not see a single fairy--- not that there were any bluebell woods in London, but there were parks with ancient trees, and markets filled with spices and fruits from countries a thousand miles away, and people of all races and types, and cobbled alleys that echoed with ghosts, and ships that only appeared by night, and secret plague pits under the ground.”
― Joanne Harris, The Moonlight Market

“we live so loudly that if our lives / become history it will be written in bold”
― Reese Lieberman, living proof: poems and prose

“How do I know I'm the main character? I could be a diversionary subplot, or a way to keep the Plot Armor out of the hands of the main character long enough for the real main character to use it, couldn't I?”
― Kevin Hess, The Dragon of Dire Verses

“I know. I know. Me? Dutiful daughter? All-round good girl? Owner of an up-and-coming event-planning company? Killer of plants and unwed at thirty? Pulling a heist?
Guilty as charged.”
― Sara Desai, 'Til Heist Do Us Part

“Vanessa called me Moth. But Charissa told me I hadn't declared my true colors yet. What did she mean?'
'She meant that your allegiance remains undetermined,' said Burnet. 'Argent is a name that can refer both to a Moth and a Butterfly. It means that you choose your colors, instead of having them imposed by birth.”
― Joanne Harris, The Moonlight Market

“You don't belong in Jack's world, and he doesn't belong in yours. My advice is to get out while you can."
I glared at him with a mixture of disbelief and annoyance. "You think you know everything about me, but I'm not a nice girl. I've done bad things. I've been arrested, handcuffed, and interrogated in the police station as an accessory to crime. I've broken laws. I've been threatened, kidnapped, tied up, and was an active participant in a high-speed car chase. I know who Jack is. I have a good idea about what he does. And I can make my own decision about whether we're good together or not, which, by the way, we are, subject to smoothing out a few wrinkles."
George chuckled. "So, you're saying that what you see isn't what you get. You're no lightweight."
"Damn right.”
― Sara Desai, 'Til Heist Do Us Part

“I was the main character in my own life, and I refused- refused- to fall secondary to the villain.”
― Jennifer Hartmann, Older

“Je me sens comme dans un film, où l'héroïne embarque dans un train vers une nouvelle aventure. Suis-je une héroïne ? Un personnage principal ? Il semble que oui, en tout cas, je suis le personnage principal de ma propre vie en ce moment, et bon sang, ça fait du bien.”
― Charlie, Les couleurs du changement

“I promise not to treat you like some damsel I'm trying to save."
"That's right. If anyone here is a princess, it's you.”
― Mia P. Manansala, Guilt and Ginataan

“An important note about Roxannah's background. In my conversation with Dr. Jessica Sanderson (please see Author Acknowledgements), what became obvious to me was that childhood wounds cause us to break down differently. The same wound can cause one person to break toward control, while another breaks toward fragility. We break toward hyper-vigilance, catastrophic thinking, workaholism, or worthlessness. Our deepest wounds can wear a thousand faces. But The Queen's Cook is a not a book about childhood trauma. It is the story of a woman who through hardship finds friendship, love, and a life-changing relationship with God.”
― Tessa Afshar, The Queen's Cook

“Soigne: Pronounced swan-yay, it is French for "elegant."
It is/was used to describe an exceptionally sexy, well-presented dish, but quickly devolved from trendy to dated and pretentious.”
― Terri-Lynne DeFino, Didn't You Use to Be Queenie B?

“The main character and the hero. They aren’t the same thing.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“Doha wasn’t a very good friend.
But he was a good person.
And he was a great engineer.”
― Molly Collier, The Paragon

“She seemed to feed on their laughter, and they on her humor, like the lily of the pond—sustained by the very water it purified.”
― Molly Collier, The Paragon

“He looked distraught, though perhaps he always looked like that, given that he didn’t eat enough or sleep enough or witness sunlight anywhere other than through a small window in a dark workshop.”
― Molly Collier, The Paragon

“And the lesson here is that people are unlikeable. They have the irritating habit of believing they are as important as you are to the story.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“I am re-inventing myself, writing my own story; changing my name to fit the course that I have chosen for myself. The old woman called me Vianne Rocher. Not Rochas, but Rocher, like the chocolate. This seems meaningful, somehow. As if that village on the Baïse and the chocolaterie on Allée du Pieu might both be part of my future. And before I settle anywhere, I need to learn how to be Vianne.”
― Joanne Harris, Vianne

“It was my movie and I let you be the main character.”
― Dominic Riccitello