“There was something familiar but strange about her - Snow White with a suntan. Cinderella in biker boots. Tough and delicate and magical and real all at once.”
― Allyse Near, quote from Fairytales for Wilde Girls
“A memory: Isola as a toddler, sugarlump teeth, skin still smelling of milk. Hair that curled without use of an iron and sweet dresses that didn’t matter were dirtied. When she was old enough, she demanded the usual suspects at bedtime: The Little Mermaid, Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast.
Even then, Mother’s contempt for non-Pardieu fairytales was obvious.
‘Hmph,’ she snorted derisively, folding up her knees to perch on Isola’s bed. ‘Listen to me, Isola. The original Beauty’s just an encouragement to young women to accept arranged marriages. What it’s really saying to impressionable girls is, “Don’t worry if your new husband is decades older than you, or ugly, or horrid. If you’re sweet and obedient enough, you might just discover he’s a prince in disguise!’’
Mother’s Most Lasting Advice
‘Never be that girl, Isola. Never pick the beast or the wolf on the off-chance he won’t devour you.”
― Allyse Near, quote from Fairytales for Wilde Girls
“Her lips were frosted with sugar and faeriedust.”
― Allyse Near, quote from Fairytales for Wilde Girls
“And they lived ever after, whether they were happy about it or not.”
― Allyse Near, quote from Fairytales for Wilde Girls
“Ah, sweetie. If the poets couldn’t unriddle them, then you certainly can’t. Be kind, and keep your ears on offer if she wants to talk. But you can’t draw out the strangeness, Edgar. It’s not a poison.”
― Allyse Near, quote from Fairytales for Wilde Girls
“His face was a ghost story: graveyard eyes, cheekbones as sharp as urban legends, a sealed-coffin mouth.”
― Allyse Near, quote from Fairytales for Wilde Girls
“No sooner are her glass toes thrust into the mud grave than the revolutions begin. Uprisings, fire and steel. The prince is lynched in the ballroom with the dead girl's hair. Royalty's a thing of the past. The kingdom chooses their monarch.
Naturally, they elect a wolf.”
― Allyse Near, quote from Fairytales for Wilde Girls
“Once upon a time, Isola Wilde was watching late-night television with her eldest brother, Alejandro, when Channel 12 broadcast a live suicide.”
― Allyse Near, quote from Fairytales for Wilde Girls
“Don't deny yourself your oddities but DON'T FOLLOW AFTER ME”
― Allyse Near, quote from Fairytales for Wilde Girls
“He shook his head,'Fuck, you say such fucking weird things.'
'Is that still your favourite word?' asked Isola interestedly, 'I like "verisimilitude". Tolkein said the most beautiful English phrase is "cellar door",”
― Allyse Near, quote from Fairytales for Wilde Girls
“I may not be the most kind, the most loving, the most steadfast – but I have a little of all those things, and while I have those qualities, and the memories of the people who gave them to me, why, then Loneliness can never hurt me!”
― Allyse Near, quote from Fairytales for Wilde Girls
“He said her name like a detective unmasking the face of the culprit he'd suspected all along.”
― Allyse Near, quote from Fairytales for Wilde Girls
“He's Jack the Ripper baby.He'll take your heart.”
― Allyse Near, quote from Fairytales for Wilde Girls
“The bathroom was jungle-fogged, flooded with puddles, piled with soaked towels; cakes of soap with long strands of blonde baked in.
A girl in pieces: Barbie-thin ankles, a shaving cut on her knee; hipbones she could stab you with; white hands gelled with strawberry body lotion.”
― Allyse Near, quote from Fairytales for Wilde Girls
“It is the responsiblity of every human to know their actions and the consequences of their actions and to ask questions and to question things when they are wrong.”
― Michael Moore, quote from Here Comes Trouble
“The last scroll was rolled so tight it seemed almost solid. Likely it was the oldest. As I forced it open it broke in pieces: two, three, and eventually five. I regretted doing it, but it was the only way to read it. If it had stayed coiled much longer, it would have crumbled into bits, never to be read again.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from The Complete Tawny Man Trilogy: Fool's Errand, The Golden Fool, Fool's Fate
“It is a dangerous myth that we are better historians than our predecessors. We are not.”
― quote from SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
“CHRIST,” BILL EXHALED LOUDLY AND grabbed the back of his head. “Let him go. Put the table back.” Nathan and Jim let go of me. I turned, pressed my back to the wall and inched toward the far corner of the room. The two men slid the table to the middle of the room. Bill stood in front of the door, his head turned. The three men nodded at each other. Bill cracked the door. “Yeah?” The voice responded low and hushed. I couldn’t make out the words. Bill covered most of the door with his body. Nathan hung back in the corner nearest me. Jim stood a few feet from Bill. Bill took a step back, looked over his shoulder at me and shook his head. “Nathan, watch him for a minute.” “OK,” Nathan said. Bill and Jim stepped out. The door closed behind them. Nathan walked backward to the door. He kept his eyes on me. “Bet I could take you down,” I said.”
― L.T. Ryan, quote from Noble Beginnings
“there was something new happening, a wheel inside my heart I’d never noticed before, and it was spinning so fast it made me dizzy. And the farther away she got, the faster it spun, like there was an invisible cord unreeling from it that stretched between us, and if she went too far it would snap—and kill me. I wondered if this strange, sweet pain was love.”
― Ransom Riggs, quote from Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children Boxed Set
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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