Quotes from Better When He's Bad

“I don't know how love works, Dovie. I don't know how to be anything other than this, but I know the only thing that gives me hope is the idea of you and me. I know I'm not the ideal, not the dream guy, but no one will ever fight for you the way I will. I promise you that you will always have the best parts of me I have to give.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“You don’t need anyone to show you how to be good, you’re so much better when you’re bad.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“Whoever said crime doesn't pay is an idiot. It pays great, which is why there is so much of it.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“Five years without sex was no joke, three months without sex, when you have just figured out who the person you wanted to have sex with for the rest of your life was, was flat-out torture.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“I wasn't into all that power and domination crap, but with her, man, I could play lord and master all day long if she was into it.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“I hated to admit it, but he was all sorts of sexy felon. God, what was wrong with me? That kiss had made me stupid.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“A guy has needs, but so does a girl. She just needs the right person to make her hot enough to ask for them to be met.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“When a guy like that kisses you, it doesn’t matter if you’re important or special. All that matters is that it’s you he’s kissing, and man, was he kissing the shit out of you.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“I get the feeling that you won’t let me put my hands on you if I put them on someone else. Right now that doesn’t work for me and I want my hands on you as often as you’ll let me put them there. - BAX”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“Do you want me to lie to you?"
I grabbed his hand and forced him to hold the towel so I could work on his face. I cleaned him off with a cotton ball soaked in peroxide, which had him swearing and scowling at me. I found the little butterfly Steri-strip I bought and slapped a couple on his cheek.
"Yeah. I think I do." I couldn't tell the difference when he lied to me anyway. He grunted and narrowed his eyes even farther at me when I slimed some antibacterial goo on his lower lip.
"then no. You wold be exactly like all the rest.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“Oh, honey, if you look close enough, everything is in those eyes. That’s why they’re so dark. They are full. Full of every secret, every promise, and every temptation that can make a good girl do really bad things and enjoy every second of it.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“I wasn't sure what I had just agreed to, or what was waiting for me around the next bend. What I did know, could feel in every cell of my body, was that I had just made an unbreakable deal with the devil and paying up might mark my soul forever.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“Some boys . . . they are just better when they’re bad. Bax is one of them and I’m starting to think my brother might be one of them, too. I just have to be good enough for all of us to balance it out.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“She was upset about something and all I wanted to do was get her naked and play connect the dots.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“Don't fuck this up, it will be the worst decision you have made to date- and holy hell, have there been a lot of bad decisions made on your part over the years.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“I made a noise in my throat and tried to remember why I thought I'd missed her the last couple of days.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“I was stunned. He wasn't much of a talker in the best of times, but man, when he put his mind into it, he had a way with words that was incomparable.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“I kissed the living shit out of her as I came harder than I ever had in my life. I kissed her until neither of us could breathe. Kissed her until she was pulling at my ears to get me to let her go. Kissed her until I felt her start to shimmy and quake around my dick. Kissed her until I sent her back over the edge while I tried to get my wits and rationality back. I kissed her like I knew there were only a limited number of times she was going to let me do it, and I was going to make each one a memory.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“You’re a nice girl, Dovie. You should be anywhere but here with anyone but me. This shit with Race and Novak, your old man being the scum of the earth . . . you deserve so much more than all of it. Your life should look different than this, and sooner or later you’re going to hate me.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“She was like some kind of balm that made all the ravaged and torn pieces of my soul feel less raw.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“You survived in his world by being the best of the worst and there was no doubt in my mind that was exactly what Bax was”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“I don't know what the exact answer is, Bax, but I do know you made the choice to be ab ad guy and you can make the choice not to be.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“He was talking about someplace called Spanky’s over in the District.” The District was where all the working girls lived and worked. It was where all the strip clubs and bars where girls were looking to make ends meet on their backs were at. It was still in the Point, just one more part of what living on the poor side of town brought you.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“And then you opened your mouth. All that love, all that loyalty, all the innocence, even though life had kicked you around time and time again, and all I wanted to do was let some of that sweetness and light touch me. I’ve never had very clean hands, but the first time I touched you, that first gasp out of that perfect mouth, the first time I thrust into you, God, Dovie, you made me feel like I was the king in a land of second chances.” I was stunned.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

“You don’t need anyone to show you how to be good, you’re so much better when you’re bad.” She”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Better When He's Bad

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“Publicity is effective precisely because it feeds upon the real. Clothes, food, cars, cosmetics, baths, sunshine are real things to be enjoyed in themselves. Publicity begins by working on a natural appetite for pleasure. But it cannot offer the real object of pleasure and there is no convincing substitute for a pleasure in that pleasure's own terms. The more convincingly publicity conveys the pleasure of bathing in a warm, distant sea, the more the spectator-buyer will become aware that he is hundreds of miles away from that sea and the more remote the chance of bathing in it will seem to him. This is why publicity can never really afford to be about the product or opportunity it is proposing to the buyer who is not yet enjoying it. Publicity is never a celebration of a pleasure-in-itself. Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The image then makes him envious of himself as he might be. Yet what makes this self-which-he-might-be enviable? The envy of others. Publicity is about social relations, not objects. Its promise is not of pleasure, but of happiness : happiness as judged from the outside by others. The happiness of being envied is glamour.
Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest - if you do, you will become less enviable.
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The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product. She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself. One could put this another way : the publicity images steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product. (P. 128)”
― John Berger, quote from Ways of Seeing

“If I cannot change what I had for lunch yesterday, I certainly cannot unmake a marriage, erase the betrayal of a friend, or board a ship that left port twenty years ago.”
― Greg Iles, quote from The Quiet Game

“My guess? Romance novels. My guess? She started reading them early. My guess? She started them at a time where they made a huge impression on her and changed her perceptions. She isn't cocooned, she pays attention and she knows there are no men out there like the men in those books she reads so she prefers being with them than trying to find someone like them which, she thinks, is a fruitless endeavor. That fantasy is far better than any reality and, you know what? She's right. Men are a pain in the ass and a lot of them are dicks who cause heartbreak. And her, a girl like Faye? Well, she knows she's the kind of girl men like that will chew up and spit out. So she's smart and she's not going to go there.”
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“The Bombyx mori caterpillar," her brother supplied, thinking of snack time at the Shaolin Temple. "It tastes like chicken.”
― Gordon Korman, quote from The Emperor's Code

“Knowing that it would happen and experiencing it are two entirely different things.”
― Amy Ewing, quote from The Jewel

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