Quotes from Bright Young Things

Anna Godbersen ·  389 pages

Rating: (11.9K votes)


“Love is all right, as things go, but lovers can be a terrible waste of a girl's time.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Bright Young Things


“It is easy to forget now, how effervescent and free we all felt that summer.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Bright Young Things


“All really interesting girls invent themselves.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Bright Young Things


“Among her other talents were forgetting what she did not like and ignoring what she preferred not to see.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Bright Young Things


“It is often advantageous to forget. Forget your wincing humiliations, forget life's blows, and get on. For blocks in every direction, down every street in the city, people not yet old enough to have lines on their foreheads were laughing away memory, warmly ensconced in shrines of forgetfulness. Those who followed the word of God and those who preferred what the priests called "hoodoo" alike. People everywhere forgetting with drink or forgetting with religion or forgetting with the numbing quality of their many heaps of things. They looked forward and imagined rosy tomorrows, and gave up whatever horrors heckled their dreams, and listened to the pretty stories of whomever ruled their pulpit.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Bright Young Things



“It is easy to forget now, how effervescent and free we all felt that summer. Everything fades: the shimmer of gold over White Cove; the laughter in the night air; the lavender early morning light on the faces of skyscrapers, which had suddenly become so heroically tall. Every dawn seemed to promise fresh miracles, among other joys that are in short supply these days. And so I will try to tell you, while I still remember, how it was then, before everything changed-that final season of the era that roared.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Bright Young Things


“That is what I want to tell you about: the girls with their short skirts and bright eyes and big-city dreams.

The girls of 1929.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Bright Young Things


“Well, if you weren't flirting with him"-his voice had now grown a little plaintive-"who was he, and what did you want with him anyway?"
"If you are so determined to bore me, I may just have to go home." Astrid sighed carelessly, "What a shame, when I am wearing such a pretty dress.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Bright Young Things


“He was just like summer, and she loved summer. If she had any wish, it would be to live a lifetime of summers.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Bright Young Things


“In New York there is always something to look at, but it is all infinitely more interesting through a window in the backseat of a limousine.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Bright Young Things



“But in that moment she realized how false most smiles were and what a tremendous waste of time.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Bright Young Things


“Girls took to dressing like boys, and though women had obtained the vote, we had swiftly moved on to pursuing flashier freedoms: necking in cars and smoking cigarettes and walking down city streets in flesh colored stockings.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Bright Young Things


“... and in that part of the world the darkness could go on and on forever, as though there would never be light again. She hadn't ever been able to tolerate that very well.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Bright Young Things


“...when girls use the brightness of their eyes or the softness of their skin, they have an uncommon advantage in getting what they want.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Bright Young Things


“It was like the color of his eyes, she supposed - not quite one shade or another, and utterly unlike anyone else's.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Bright Young Things



About the author

Anna Godbersen
Born place: in Berkeley, California, The United States
Born date April 10, 1980
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