Quotes from Abandon

“Don't cry."
"How can I not?" I asked him. "You just said you loved me."
"Well, why else did you think all of this was happening?" He set the book aside to wrap his arms around me. "The Furies wouldn't be trying to kill you if I didn't love you."
"I didn't know," I said. Tears were trickling down my cheeks, but I did nothing to try to stop them. His shirt was absorving most of them. "You never said anything about it. Every time I saw you, you just acted so... wild."
"How was I supposed to act?" he asked. "You kept doing things like throwing tea in my face.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“But really, the term “forgive and forget” doesn’t make sense to me. Forgiving does allow us to stop dwelling on an issue, which isn’t always healthy. But if we forget, we don’t learn from our mistakes. And that can be deadly.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“Anything can happen in the blink of an eye. Anything at all.
One.
Two.
Three.
Blink.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“And eternity is a long time. So if you have to spend it with someone I could see wanting to spend it with someone impossible...but interesting....”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“Why would John bother using windows or doors like a normal person? Why would he bother to say hello? Just poof. Crunch. Bye.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“No Hello.
No Hi, Pierce. Nice right hook you have there.
No It's lovely to see you. Sorry about your counselor being killed last night. Yes, I see your grandmother is a Fury even though I told you none was after you. I guess I was wrong about that.
Just Let's go.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“He let his mouth linger on mine, neither possessively nor sweetly... like his mouth just belonged there on mine. And he was right. It did. It always had.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“You didn't," John said, stepping from the shadows as he clapped for me, "even hit your head this time.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“You just said you were sorry."

...

"I was only apologizing," he said stiffly, "for startling you. The applause was to compliment you on the improvement in your life-saving techniques since the last time you-”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“I'll tell you what you can do," he said, stopping abruptly. Now he did reach out to grip both my shoulders. But still not to kiss me. Only so he could wheel me around to glare at me some more. "You can leave me alone."
Tears sprang once more into my eyes. That's what he wanted from me? For me to stay away from him?
This had turned into a greater disaster than when I'd died. And I was still breathing, so that was say something.
"I'd like to," I said. All I could hear besides the deep, disapproving timbre of his voice was the drum of my heartbeat in my ears. Stupid girl. Stupid girl. Stupid girl, my heart seemed to be saying. "Except every time I try, you show back up, and act such a... such a..."
"Such a what?" he demanded. He seemed to be practically daring me to say.
Don't, the voice of my mother warned inside my head. Don't say it.
"Jerk.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“So take my advice: whatever you do? Don’t blink”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“I didn't even think about suggesting he take the boots off. There'd probably be a apocalypse or something.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“Honey, some boys stopped by to see you. They had wood.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“I don't really know. I've never rescued a girl I love from the Furies before." He looked alarmed as he noticed my eyes were filling with tears. "Don't cry."
"How can I not?" I asked him. "You just said you love me."
"Why else did you think all of this was happening?" He set the book aside to wrap his arms around me. "The Furies wouldn't be trying to kill you if I didn't love you.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“It’s one thing to protect yourself,” Dad yelled at me during our very next lunch. “That I get. Have I ever told you not to defend yourself? No. But did you have to permanently maim him? I spent all that money on that on that fancy school for girls-not to mention all that money for the shrinks-and what did that get me?”
I shrugged. “A seven-figure civil suit?”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“What did that mean? Where could it go? He was a death diety. I was a high school senior.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“What's the point? was my attitude. We're all just going to die and then NOT be let on the boat.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“There’s no accountability anymore, Pierce, no one holds anyone accountable for what they do. It’s always someone else’s fault. Usually people just blame the victim.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“I needed another soda. I’d only had six since breakfast.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“I thought you'd like it," he said, seeming hurt. "You look very pretty.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“„Everyone wants to believe that there’s something else – something great – waiting for them on the other side. Paradise. Valhalla. Heaven. Their next – hopefully less horrible – life.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“It's only in fairy tales that princesses can afford to wait for the handsome prince to save them. In real life, they have to bust out of their own coffins and do the saving themselves.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“I felt as if the Milky Way, hovering above our heads like a celestial pitcher, had suddenly overturned, pouring suns and planets down my throat. Stars seemed to be shooting out of my finger and toes, the ends of my hair.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“Don't ever let them tell you that you're too stupid to do something. I'm not saying it's going to be easy for you, the way it was for you mom. Maybe you're going to have to work for it a little harder than other people, which I know isn't fair. But that doesn't mean you should just give up. Because if you do that, then where will you be?”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“The term “forgive and forget” doesn’t make sense to me. Forgiving does allow us to stop dwelling on an issue, which isn’t always healthy. But if we forget, we don’t learn from our mistakes.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

“Yeah,” Nicole said, her straw noisily hitting the
bottom of her Gut Buster. “Well, I would have
appreciated it if you guys had wrecked a little less
stuff. Because my house smelled like smoke for
months. And construction on the Tarantinos’ new
garage starts at eight on the dot every morning, and
it’s still going on, and you know how I get if I don’t
have my full ten hours of beauty sleep.”
“So that’s what happened to your face,” Cody said.
“I was wondering.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Abandon

About the author

Popular quotes

“What is our life: (Pause.) it’s looking forward or it’s looking back. And that’s our life. That’s it. Where is the moment?”
― David Mamet, quote from Glengarry Glen Ross

“غيري يكتب كما يتكلم ، و أنا أكتب كما ألتزم الصمت”
― Amin Maalouf, quote from Balthasar's Odyssey

“Marginalia

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
who wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
Yes." "Bull's-eye." "My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird singing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love.”
― Billy Collins, quote from Picnic, Lightning

“Life has no plot. It is by far more interesting than anything you can say about it...”
― Erica Jong, quote from Fear of Flying

“I thought I saw a puddy tat.”
He grinned. “You did, you did.”
― Kerrelyn Sparks, quote from All I Want for Christmas is a Vampire

Interesting books

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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