“He had a dashing smile. It nearly dashed right off his face.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“What are you doing?"
"Ya!" said Jane, whirling around, her hands held up menacingly.
It was Mr. Nobley with coat, hat, and cane, watching her with wide eyes. Jane took several quick (but oh so casual) steps away from Martin's window.
"Um, did I just say, 'Ya'?"
"You just said 'Ya,'" he confirmed. "If I am not mistaken, it was a battle cry, warning that you were about to attack me.
I, uh..." She stopped to laugh. "I wasn't aware until this precise and awkward moment that when startled in a startled in a strange place, my instincts would have me pretend to be a ninja.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a thirty-something woman in possession of a satisfying career and fabulous hairdo must be in want of very little”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“If you were a woman, all I'd have to say is 'Colin Firth in a wet shirt' and you'd say 'Ah.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“For Colin Firth:
You're a really great guy, but I'm married, so I think we should just be friends.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“It's not something you tell your single best friend. It'd be like rubbing your nose in the poop of my happiness.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“Miss Hayes, have you stopped to consider that you might have this all backward? That in fact you are my fantasy?”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“Figure out what is real for you. No use leaning on someone else's story all your life.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“I think you just complimented me," said Jane. "You should take better care next time."
The music had started, the couples had begun a promenade, but Mr. Nobley paused to hold Jane's arm and whisper, "Jane Erstwhile, if I never had to speak with another human being but you, I would die a happy man. I would that these people, the music, the food and foolishness all disappeared and left us alone. I would never tire of looking at you or listening to you." He took a breath. "There. That compliment was on purpose. I swear I will never idly compliment you again."
Jane's mouth was dry. All she could think to say was, "But... but surely you wouldn't banish all the food."
He considered, then nodded once. "Right. We will keep the food. We will have a picnic."
And he spun her into the middle of the dance.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“He nodded. "And if I don't make you feel like the most beautiful woman in the world every day of your life, then I don't deserve to be near you.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“... fantasy is not practice for what is real—fantasy is the opiate of women.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“Why was the judgement of the disapproving so valuable? Who said that their good opinions tended to be any more rational than those of generally pleasant people?”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“I'm not hopeless, that's the problem. I'm too hopeful, if anything ... I'm so thick-headed it's taken me this long to give up on men, but I can't give up completely, you know? So I ... I channel all my hope into an idea, to someone who can't reject me because he isn't real!”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“Miss Erstwhile: “It is such a relief, Mr. Nobley, to already know that you find this exercise vulgar and your partner unworthy. It saves us the idle chitchat.”
Mr. Nobley: “And yet you chat away.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“Well do I remember the first night we met, how you questioned my opinion that first impressions are perfect. You were right to do so, of course, but even then I suspected what I've come to believe most passionately these past weeks: from that first moment, I knew you were a dangerous woman, and I was in great peril of falling in love."
She thought she should say something witty here. She said, "Really?”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“I need to admit up front that I don't know how to have a fling. I'm not good at playing around and then saying good-bye. I'm throwing myself at your feet because I'm hoping for a shot at forever." Henry Jenkins/Mr. Nobley”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“Figure out what is real for you. No use leaning on someone else's story all your life...go make your happily-ever-after happen.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“What? Don't British women know how to use their knees?”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“If you're listening Big Brother, I refuse to be Fanny Price.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“I know they are naught things, but I devour novels.” (p. 57).”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“I couldn't see what was real until time had washed away everything else.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“Later, when they would spend straight hours conversing in the dark, Jane would realize that Henry kissed the way he talked- his entire attention taut, focused, intensely hers.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“Is this why women wear heels? thought Jane. We hobble ourselves so we can still be rescued by men?”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“He had the kind of face you wanted to kiss — lips, forehead, cheeks, eyelids, everywhere except his chin. That you wanted to bite.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“Why was the judgment of the disapproving so valuable? Who said that their good opinions tended to be any more rational than those of generally pleasant people?”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“She was not who she'd thought she was. No one was.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“Figure out what is real for you. No use leaning on someone else’s story all your life.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“Without hope, it was impossible to fantasize.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“Mr Nobley: "Ah here you are. Miss Erstwhile. You are infuriating and irritating, and yet I find myself looking for you. I would be grateful if you would send me away and make me swear to never return.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
“I wasn't aware until this precise and awkward moment that when startled in a strange place, my instincts would have me pretend to be a ninja.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from Austenland
Shannon Hale
Born place: in Salt Lake City, Utah, The United States
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“Melancholy can be overcome only by melancholy.”
― Robert Burton, quote from The Anatomy of Melancholy
“When you are older you will meet a man who will love you for yourself. A good-natured, charming respectable man who is liked by you family.”
― Amanda Grange, quote from Mr. Darcy's Diary
“We know so little,” she said, “about even those who are closest to us. We know so little of what really goes on in other people’s lives.”
― Susan Howatch, quote from The Wheel of Fortune
“The thing that Buffalo Hump was most grateful for, as he rode into the emptiness, was the knowledge that in the years of his youth and manhood he had drawn the lifeblood of so many enemies. He had been a great killer; it was his way and the way of his people; no one in his tribe had killed so often and so well. The killings were good to remember, as he rode his old horse deeper into the llano, away from all the places where people came.”
― Larry McMurtry, quote from Comanche Moon
“Dr. Kevorkian has just unstrapped me from the gurney after yet another controlled near-death experience. I was lucky enough on this trip to interview none other than the late Adolf Hitler.
I was gratified to learn that he now feels remorse for any actions of his, however indirectly, which might have had anything to do with the violent deaths suffered by thirty-five million people during World War II. He and his mistress Eva Braun, of course, were among those casualties, along with four million other Germans, six million Jews, eighteen million members of the Soviet Union, and so on.
I paid my dues along with everybody else,” he said.
It is his hope that a modest monument, possibly a stone cross, since he was a Christian, will be erected somewhere in his memory, possibly on the grounds of the United Nations headquarters in New York. It should be incised, he said, with his name and dates 1889-1945. Underneath should be a two-word sentence in German: “Entschuldigen Sie.”
Roughly translated into English, this comes out, “I Beg Your Pardon,” or “Excuse Me.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
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