“He was a mystery to her, and every time she tried to solve him it caused her a little more pain. But when she tired to give him up he pursued her in her thoughts, stronger each time.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“To look in the face of hard things and keep moving forward - that's what one has to do.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“It is a truth universally acknowledge that there will always be a gentleman to dance with, except at just the moment when you require one most.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“A young lady's most natural ally is her sister although sometimes our own relatives are as inscrutable to us as an antipodean.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“The world is such a marvel-it gave you trials, but if you were still and concentrated, if you tried to do the right thing, it always provided you with salvation.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“A young woman, newly wed, may find herself in the delightful position of wanting to do nothing without the company of her darling husband. She may indeed discover that she spends all her waking hours with her fellow to the exclusion of every other friend or family member. This is understandable, but wholly unacceptable, to society.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“She was like a heroine in a novel that she herself was writing the character kept protesting that she was too strong for love and yet the narrator went on describing her desire.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“There was plenty of life left and if he had to he would use it all to get her back. The time had passed for making promises to her-all that was left for him was to act.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“She was full of some strange energy that morning. Her every movement had purpose and life and she seemed to find satisfaction in every little thing.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“A man is made in the rough-and-tumble of the world a lady emerges from the flossy back rooms of her own imagination.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“She was trying to sound tough and impatient, but she knew that vulnerable desire to be wooed was still brimming in her tone.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“But I wanted to tell you before I left how completely abjectly sorry I am for all the pain I have caused you and that if I die you were the one true love of my life. By the time you read this I will be gone but please know I am still always at your side.... Yours forever Henery William Schoonmaker”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“It had been an awful thing to lose Henry the first time, to matrimony, but to discover what a false front he was capable of was another kind of blow, and it had left her almost speechless. Then there was the fury with herself—for she had known what Henry’s love was, and still she had gone back to suffer a little more at his hands.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“Even when a girl is married she still never completely leaves her mother and father's home.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“She found herself longing for home-not just for the hotel but for New York and all the real novels that she could lose herself in there.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“Good night.' Diana summoned all the dignity that she could manage in her bedraggled state and began to move back up the beach. Her dress was soaked and her stockings dotted with sand and her heart couldn't possibly withstand any more.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“Henry turned his hat in his hands but went on looking at Diana in a way that made her want to crawl into his arms and stay there forever.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“That was how the heroine of a book would play it and Diana was still writing her own story the best heroines she'd always believed took their fate into their own hands.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“Life was a short window and there was no sense in doing the wrong thing over and over even if it was so difficult to stop.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“Always stay sharp on railways and cruise ships for transit has a way of making everything clear.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“She thought of Henry and Diana on the stoop gazing at each other with the confusion and sadness of two puppies who have just stumbled into their first puddle and not yet come to understand what has happened to them and found that she wanted to lie extravagantly.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“They were all dressed in their finest as though life really were some magical stage play in which every moment ought to be illuminated with its own bright spotlight.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“What was it about that short creature with her wild hair and spurious air of purity and why would anyone much less two men love her and to such disastrous ends.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“Henry closed his eyes and imagined the sweet petulant woundedness with which she had stared at him on the beach. He felt a little proud that she could love him.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“Henry was thinking of the younger Holland sister of the way she could go from being an impetuous girl to a knowing woman in a few seconds and never lose the stars in her eyes.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“I know that I might die but that seems a happier end than being without you and anyway it seems to me that looking in the face of hard things and still being able to move forward even when the end includes grave danger and the possibility of death is the mark of a man.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“She had believed him to be hers, time and again, but still she could not stay the feeling that he might at any moment slip through her fingers.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“She saw now that he was like an illusionist who captivated women with a little sleight of hand and once she had seen the mechanism it had lost all power for her.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“Henry wondered not for the first time if her blood ran red or black.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“After Henry's treatment of her she wasn't sure that men could honestly love women but she wanted to believe it. She wanted to be told pretty things and for the frightening clip of her heart to slow to something more reasonable.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Envy
“You know, Grace, it's queer but I don't feel narrow. I feel broad. How can I explain it to you, so you would understand? I've seen everything...and I've hardly been away from this yard....
I've been part of the beginning and part of the growth. I've married...and borne children and looked into the face of death. Is childbirth narrow, Grace? Or marriage? Or death? When you've experienced all those things, Grace, the spirit has traveled although the body has been confined. I think travel is a rare privilege and I'm glad you can have it. But not every one who stays at home is narrow and not every one who travels is broad. I think if you can understand humanity...can sympathize with every creature...can put yourself into the personality of every one...you're not narrow...you're broad.”
― Bess Streeter Aldrich, quote from A Lantern in Her Hand
“but oftener he remembered the man in the red sweater, the death of Curly, the great fight with Spitz and the good things he had eaten or would like to eat. He was not homesick. The Sunland was very dim and distant, and such memories had no power over him. Far more potent were the memories of his heredity that gave things he had never seen before a seeming familiarity; the instincts (which were but the memories of his ancestors become habits) which had lapsed in later days, and still later, in him, quickened and became alive again.”
― Jack London, quote from The Call of the Wild/White Fang
“Tabitha blinked innocently. "Why is your consort speaking to me without my having addressed him first?" she asked Kaia. "Have you not taught him the proper order of things?"
So the little man wasn't supposed to speak to the women folk without an invitation? Screw that. "Just stay out of my head, Harpy, or I'll make sure you regret it. By the way, how's the leg?"
She hissed at him.
Win!”
― Gena Showalter, quote from The Darkest Surrender
“This would be so goddamn much easier if I weren’t human,” she said. “Think about it. If I weren’t human, why the hell would I care whether you got raped?”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Lilith's Brood
“Perhaps this is simply the way it is with writers. It's when they don't see you that you matter. Because then you can belong to them in a way that permits them complete possession. You are determined by them. You are controlled. You are, generally speaking, exaggerated.”
― Alice Walker, quote from The Temple of My Familiar
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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