“There is lust and then there is love. They are related, but still very different things. To indulge in one requires little but honeyed speech and a change of clothes; to obtain the other, by contrast, a man must give up his rib. In return, his woman will undo the sin of Eve, and bring him back into Paradise.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Everything we say is a story. But nothing we say is just a story.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“You were right and I was wrong. When life hurts more than death, it is not worth living.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“I did not know my soul until I saw it's reflection in your eyes.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“There is a trick to flying. The angels told me." He had smiled at my wide-eyed awe. "You need to forget everything you know as a human being. When you are human, you discover that there is great power in hating the earth. And it can almost make you fly. But it never will."
I had frowned, not quite understanding him. "So, what's the trick?"
"Love the sky.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Don't underestimate the power of events that happened a long time ago. That is the tragic flaw of modern man.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“You owe me nothing, but I want everything.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said, “at nine o’clock. Don’t open your door to anyone else.”
“Not even my balcony door?”
“Especially not your balcony door.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Perhaps. But the firstborn of hope is tragedy.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“.... "death turns all men into great lovers. Would that they were equally ardent while the lady was still alive!”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“She laughed out loud, a warm, knowing laughter that made me once again wonder about the secret ingredient in these women’s lives. Whatever it was, I was clearly missing it. It was so much more than just self-confidence; it seemed to be the ability to love oneself, enthusiastically and unsparingly, body and soul, naturally followed by the assumption that every man on the planet is dying to get in on the act.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Think about it. He drinks poison. What kind of man drinks poison? She is the one who stabs herself with his dagger. The manly way.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there were many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, and it did now, too.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“By the time we left college, I had become my own image: a dandelion in the flower bed of society. Kinda cute, but still a weed.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“If you let go of me now,” I whispered, stretching against him, “it could be another six hundred years before you find me again. Are you willing to take that risk?”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Peppo!" I yelled, pulling at my cousin's suspenders. "I really don't want to be arrested, okay?"
"Don't worry!" Peppo turned a corner and accelerated as he spoke. "I go too fast for police!”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“But he is an Italian," was Umberto's sensible reply. "He doesn't care if you break some law a little bit, as long as you wear beautiful shoes. Are you wearing beautiful shoes? Are you wearing the shoes I gave you?...principessa?"
I looked down at my flip-flops. "I guess I'm toast.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow. Well, perhaps you are right. Perhaps the wise spurn one to remain safe from the other, but I should rather choose to have my eyes burnt in their sockets than to have been born without.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“It's what we call a dolce pazzia... a sweet madness. Once you feel it, you will never want to leave it.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Romeo was cute …”
“Cute?” Alessandro rolled his eyes. “What kind of man is cute?”
“… and an excellent dancer …”
“Romeo had feet of lead! He said so himself!”
“… but most importantly,” I concluded, “he had nice hands!”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“I am sorry I didn’t tell you the truth before. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. You kept asking about Romeo and what he was really like. I was hoping that”—he smiled wistfully—“you would recognize me.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“as a bird swoops down on it's prey, and assumes this land bound wretch into heaven, so did romeo steal her lips before they fled him again. suspended somewhere between cherubs and devils, his quarry ceased to buck, and he spread his wings wide and let the rising wind carry them off across the sky, until even the predator himself had lost every hope of returning home. within that one embrace, [he] became aware of a feeling of certainty he had not thought possible for anyone - even the virtuous. with her in his arms, all other women, past, present, and future, simply ceased to exist.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“After the dress rehearsal that afternoon, someone had misplaced the vial of poison, and for lack of better, Romeo would have to commit suicide by eating Tic Tacs.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Look,' I said, struggling to keep up, 'I just wanna make one thing absolutely clear. I don't believe in guns. I just want peace. Okay?'
Alessandro stopped in the middle of the corridor, took out the gun, and wrapped my hand around it before I realized what he was doing. 'Can you feel that? That's a gun. It exists. And there are a lot of people out there who do believe in it. So, excused me for taking care of them so you can have your peace.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Everything has a shadow-side. In my opinion, that is what makes life interesting.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“When the old men fight, the young people die.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“...it is fifty percent what they see, and fifty percent what they think they see.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“...and whether or not we had now paid our dues, he was my blessing, and I was his...”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“She had died peacefully, in her sleep, after an evening of listening to all of her favorite Fred Astaire songs, one crackling record after another. Once the last chord of the last piece had died out, she had stood up and opened the French doors to the garden outside, perhaps waiting to breathe in the honeysuckle one more time.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever. —Winnie the Pooh”
― Monica Murphy, quote from Second Chance Boyfriend
“I don’t aspire to rule the world. I just want to rule my world.”
― G.J. Walker-Smith, quote from Saving Wishes
“Making these choices [to attend school instead of skipping], as it turned out, wasn't about willpower. I always admired people who “willed” themselves to do something, because I have never felt I was one of them. If sheer will were enough by itself, it would have been enough a long time ago, back on University Avenue, I figured. It wasn't, not for me anyway. Instead, I needed something to motivate me. I needed a few things that I could think about in my moments of weakness that would cause me to throw off the blanket and walk through the front door. More than will, I needed something to inspire me.
One thing that helped was a picture I kept in mind, this image that I used over and over whenever I was faced with these daily choices. I pictured a runner running on a racetrack. The image was set in the summertime and the racetrack was a reddish orange, divided in white racing stripes to flag the runners’ columns. Only, the runner in my mental image did not run alongside others; she ran solo, with no one watching her. And she did not run a free and clear track, she ran one that required her to jump numerous hurdles, which made her break into a heavy sweat under the sun. I used this image every time I thought of things that frustrated me: the heavy books, my crazy sleep schedule, the question of where I would sleep and what I would eat. To overcome these issues I pictured my runner bolting down the track, jumping hurdles toward the finish line.
Hunger, hurdle. Finding sleep, hurdle, schoolwork, hurdle. If I closed my eyes I could see the runner’s back, the movement of her sinewy muscles, glistening with sweat, bounding over the hurdles, one by one. On mornings when I did not want to get out of bed, I saw another hurdle to leap over. This way, obstacles became a natural part of the course, an indication that I was right where I needed to be, running the track, which was entirely different from letting obstacles make me believe I was off it. On a racing track, why wouldn't there be hurdles? With this picture in mind—using the hurdles to leap forward toward my diploma—I shrugged the blanket off, went through the door, and got myself to school.”
― Liz Murray, quote from Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard
“She is not what I envied in high school, the popular girl. She is something I'm not even sure existed then, the sure-footed girl. She gives the impression of being completely herself, and only a part of that impression is false.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Every Last One
“If I told you, you'd only know it in your mind, not in your heart. There's a big difference.”
― Laurie Faria Stolarz, quote from White Is for Magic
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