“Felicity ignores us. She walks out to them, an apparition in white and blue velvet, her head held high as they stare in awe at her, the goddess. I don't know yet what power feels like. But this is surely what it looks like, and I think I'm beginning to understand why those ancient women had to hide in caves. Why our parents and suitors want us to behave properly and predictably. It's not that they want to protect us; it's that they fear us.”
― A Great and Terrible Beauty
― A Great and Terrible Beauty
“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.”
― Invisible Monsters
― Invisible Monsters
“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.”
― The Handmaid's Tale
― The Handmaid's Tale
“Out of the welter of life, a few people are selected for us by the accident of temporary confinement in the same circle. We never would have chosen these neighbors; life chose them for us. But thrown together on this island of living, we stretch to understand each other and are invigorated by the stretching. The difficulty with big city environment is that if we select—and we must in order to live and breathe and work in such crowded conditions—we tend to select people like ourselves, a very monotonous diet. All hors d’oeuvres and no meat; or all sweets and no vegetables, depending on the kind of people we are. But however much the diet may differ between us, one thing is fairly certain: we usually select the known, seldom the strange. We tend not to choose the unknown which might be a shock or a disappointment or simply a little difficult to cope with. And yet it is the unknown with all its disappointments and surprises that is the most enriching.”
― Gift from the Sea
― Gift from the Sea
“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― The Four Loves
― The Four Loves
Ashley’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Ashley’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Ashley
Lists liked by Ashley




























