Quotes from If I Was Your Girl

Meredith Russo ·  280 pages

Rating: (17.3K votes)


“For as long as I could remember, I had been apologizing for existing, for trying to be who I was, to live the life I was meant to lead.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“You can have anything,” she said, “once you admit you deserve it.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“I know it hurts. I know it hurts so bad you can barely breathe sometimes. I know because I’ve been there. Please don’t leave us. I promise life can be good, and we need you too much.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“I wasn’t sorry I existed any more. I deserved to live. I deserved to find love. I knew now – I believed, now – that I deserved to be loved.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“I’m not brave,” I said, smiling despite myself. “Bravery implies I had a choice. I’m just me, you know?” I”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl



“Hell, even the straight people have enough skeletons in their closet to fill a tomb. Everybody’s too afraid of going to hell or getting made fun of to be honest about what they want and who they are, so they can’t even really admit what they want to themselves.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“I have a past, okay? And you really don't want to get involved with it.'
'Everybody's got a past,' he said. 'That doesn't mean you can't have a future.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“You tried to kill yourself,” she said, rolling her eyes up to heaven and biting her knuckle. “Andrew Hardy was gonna die one way or the other, and one of the choices gave me a daughter in exchange while the other left me with no one.” “I”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“I’ve seen trans people in movies and TV shows, but judging by how unrealistic and shitty bi characters tend to be, I’m gonna assume I know nothing. So what’s okay for me to ask?”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“I wondered when I’d reach the end of things I didn’t know. *”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl



“There are enough people waiting to crap in your cereal without you doing it for them.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“How much of life was like that, just waiting for me to come and give it a chance.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“You can have anything once you admit you deserve it.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“Amanda’s life and identity would be just as valid if she didn’t figure herself out until later in life, or if she were a tomboy, or if she were bisexual or a lesbian or asexual, or if she had trouble passing, or if she either could not or chose not to get “bottom” surgery.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“God wanted me to live, and this was the only way I knew how to survive, so this was what God wanted.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl



“You know walls are there for a reason though, right? They keep things from falling apart.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“Just 'cause I'm bi doesn't mean I have magic powers. I'm not the plucky queer sidekick in your romantic comedy.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“Just because you have a past doesn't mean you can't have a future.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“I wondered if joy could ever be felt by itself without being tainted with fear and confusion, or if some level of misery was a universal constant, like the speed of light.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“Being a girl in this world means being afraid. That fear'll keep you safe. It'll keep you alive.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl



“I have, in some ways, cleaved to stereotypes and even bent rules to make Amanda’s trans-ness as unchallenging to normative assumptions as possible.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“Radical faith means you trust that the Lord visited these weaknesses and sorrows on you as part of His plan...”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“As I spoke I thought back to what Virginia had said weeks before, about getting anything you wanted if you let yourself believe you deserved it. For as long as I could remember, I had been apologizing for existing, for trying to be who I was, to live the life I was meant to lead. Maybe this would be the last conversation I would ever have with Grant. Maybe not. Either way, I realized, I wasn’t sorry I existed anymore. I deserved to live. I deserved to find love. I knew now—I believed, now—that I deserved to be loved.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“that you think makes you so complicated couldn’t make me”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“There is no wrong way to express and embody your most authentic self!”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl



“I like him a lot.... I think I might love him. And it obviously isn't everything, but being the way I am has been a huge part of my life. It's easy to act like my past never happened, but it feels like I've put up this wall around my heart.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“[S]omething had to change. Because I had changed.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“I thought of going the rest of my life pretending I sprang to life from nothing at sixteen years old and felt my cheeks flush with shame and anger. I was so tired of cowering. I was so tired of hiding. I wanted to tell the truth, to say it out loud.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


“His shadow stretched out past mine. I remembered Mom telling me how frightening men were, all men really, how helpless it often felt to be a woman among men, and for the first time I understood what she meant.”
― Meredith Russo, quote from If I Was Your Girl


About the author

Meredith Russo
Born place: in The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Almost all instruction seems to revolve around language ac-(Jermaine spelling now) "q, a-kwi-si-tion acquisition!" ("What that?" I ask. "You know, to get. Language acquisition, to get some language.")”
― Sapphire, quote from Push


“You’re everything I never knew I wanted.” He tucks back another tendril of hair behind my ear, his eyes a little too brilliant as he draws back. “And all mine, remember that tidbit.”
― Katy Evans, quote from Mine


“A sob pops in my throat. I choke it, and look around for a harmless visual distraction, but all I see is a stocky young woman with a baby, a few seats up. The baby is pulling the woman's hair, and she is faking this look of terror.

'Oh no', she says, 'How can you do that to mommy?'

She pretends to bawl, but the baby laughs and gurgles like a psycho, and pulls even harder. I'm witnessing a fresh knife being laid into a brand-new soul. A training dagger. A maternity blade. Here's his mom quietly opening up the control incision, completely innocent in her dumbness to the world.

'Oh no, you've killed Mommy, Mommy's gone!' She plays dead.

The little guy giggles for a minute, but only that long. Then he senses something's wrong. She ain't waking up. He killed her, she abandoned him, just like that, over a pull of hair. He pokes her with his finger, he gets ready to bawl. And there you have it: he takes the handle into his own tiny hands and pulls in his first blade, right up to the hilt. Just to bring her back. And sure enough, with the splash of his first tear, she wakes right up.
'Ha, ha, I'm still here! Ha, ha it's Mommy!'
Ha, ha, that's the Scheme of Things.”
― D.B.C. Pierre, quote from Vernon God Little


“I don't like mysteries, which is why I want to solve them. It bothers me that there are things I don't know.”
― Nelson DeMille, quote from Plum Island


“She sped into traffic, earning an irritated beep from an angry driver. What was his problem? A full handspan stretched between her car and the Fiat behind her. Plenty of room…”
― James Rollins, quote from Map of Bones


Interesting books

American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History
(87.6K)
American Sniper: The...
by Chris Kyle
The Book of Life
(84.9K)
The Book of Life
by Deborah Harkness
Danse Macabre
(40.2K)
Danse Macabre
by Laurell K. Hamilton
Frostbitten
(21K)
Frostbitten
by Kelley Armstrong
Boundless
(40.3K)
Boundless
by Cynthia Hand
The Shadow of the Torturer
(17.6K)
The Shadow of the To...
by Gene Wolfe

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.